Fred Elliott

A year after the death of his first wife Sybil, Fred became romantically involved with Kathleen Gutteridge (Elizabeth Rider), an employee in the old shop, and she became pregnant but rejected Fred's proposal of marriage, feeling too young to be tied down. Kathleen agreed to allow Fred's sister, Beryl Peacock (Anny Tobin) and her husband, Sam, to adopt her baby boy, and they raised Ashley, never telling him of his true parentage. In 1999, Fred let slip to Audrey Roberts (Sue Nicholls) that Ashley is actually his son, and Beryl confirmed it.

Fred married Maureen Holdsworth (Sherrie Hewson) in 1997, but she quickly tired of his overbearing nature and his plans for their future, and she left him a week after the wedding. Fred then married barmaid Eve Sykes (Melanie Kilburn) in 2001, and he bought the Rovers Return Inn for her to work in. However, it transpired that Eve had never divorced her first husband, Ray, leaving Fred alone again.

In 2004, Fred fell out with his friend Mike Baldwin (Johnny Briggs) when Mike had an affair with Fred's girlfriend Penny King. Fred was further embittered towards Mike after he introduced Fred to Stacy Hilton, who conned him by pretending to be from Thailand. During a game of poker, Mike used Fred's feelings against him and exploited the no-limit rule to win his butcher's shop. The men were finally reconciled when Mike agreed to let Fred keep the business.

Following a brief courtship, Bev Unwin (Susie Blake) accepted a proposal from Fred in 2006, and they planned to marry in October. Intending to retire to the country, Fred sold the Rovers Return to Steve McDonald (Simon Gregson). On the wedding day, Fred left the church to talk to Audrey, as she had recently admitted her feelings for him, despite having previously declined a wedding proposal from him. After a discussion in which Fred asserted his love and commitment to marrying Bev, he left for the church but collapsed and died of a massive stroke in the hallway of Audrey's house.

In 2010, Fred was named as one of the ten best Coronation Street characters by The Guardian, who described him as "the big, bald slap head who said everything twice, and boomingly, started out as a comic gargoyle and became ever sweeter: I said, became ever sweeter [...] John Savident's performance made his failed love affairs moving and his death on his wedding day a calamity."^[4] He has also been described as "a colourful character of the type that used to abound Coronation Street but is now becoming scarce."^[1]

Based on the character's amount of declined proposals, Fred has been described as someone "who's heard the word 'No!' more times than the celebrity booker on Patrick Kielty Live."^[5]

Grace Dent of The Guardian claimed, upon the character's exit from the soap, that she would "miss Fred Elliott a lot", and that she would "miss his blunt common sense, forever flawed by his quirk of proposing to every woman he set eyes on [...] his rants about the life-enhancing properties of steak and kidney pudding [...] his barely concealed enjoyment of a good gossip with Shelley, Betty, and Violet in the Rovers backroom [...] how sometimes Fred would be propping up the bar, saying an unremarkable line in a throwaway scene, but add a wobble of the head or a camp tap of the fag that somehow made it profound."^[3]

Aired on 9 October 2006, his final episode was watched by 11 million viewers, exceeding the 9 million who viewed EastEnders the same evening.^[6]