Ken is the dad but who was Peter's mother?

Peter looks Asian, and Simon looks Brazilian, or Moroccan.

I'm confused.

Valerie Barlow, Ken's first wife played by Anne Reid.

http://coronationstreet.wikia.com/wiki/Valerie_Barlow

I always thought Peter resembled his grandfather Frank Barlow.

http://vignette4.wikia.nocookie.net/...20120825125933

You're right, Peter looks nothing like the mum or dad but you would really think the screen grandfather was a real relative.

Peter's mum was a "white" women from the sixties, Ken's first wife and before my time. Maybe she was bi-racial but was deemed to be just "olive" skinned, not realizing her true heritage............though it has definitely come back in her son/grandson. GREAT casting by Corrie!!

i wood agree.

Valerie Tatlock. She died in an accident with a hairdryer I think. The twins, Peter and Susan their twins were sent to Scotland to live with an aunt and Ken stayed on living with Uncle Albert.

Originally Posted by zoni
Peter's mum was a "white" women from the sixties, Ken's first wife and before my time. Maybe she was bi-racial but was deemed to be just "olive" skinned, not realizing her true heritage............though it has definitely come back in her son/grandson. GREAT casting by Corrie!!


So that was the Olive skinned/ bi-racial/mixed heritage ladies name... Valarie

His mum was played by Anne Reid who is a very well known actress who has done a great deal of TV and film work,,,and she is blond...

Valerie Tatlock, ken's first wife as played by Anne Reid who later in life starred in DinnerLadies and Last Tango in Halifax.

She was electrocuted in an accident when Peter and Susan were a couple of years olf.

Valerie was most certainly white, not the product of a secret bi racial affair.

I agree that Peter resembles his paternal grand father.

So far as I can tell, the whole family is Anglo Saxon stock. I really don't know where people get this mixed race nonsense from... They'll be saying Ken looks Chinese next.

Terrible casting of Valarie. Anne Reid is a great actress, but not the right person to play the mother of a dual heritage son and grandson.

This poor judgement in the 60's has created great confusion in 2015 and will get worse when Simon starts growing dread locks!!

I wonder how different, Ken's life would have been if Val had not died.

Well I don't know as Corrie isn't real

But I guess that Ken and Val would both have various affairs and Deirdre would have ended up with Mike

I'm feeling really old now reading all these posts saying they don't remember Peter's mother as, even to this day and the vast amount of work she has done, I still always think Valarie Barlow whenever I see Anne Reid!

Anyway, according to Wiki, the character has been played by 7 different actors but they are not all named and I certainly can't remember that many. I must have had a life at some point.

Ha, ha!

The mistake of course if there has been one is the casting of Alex Bain who does look mixed race but not so much it is a problem and can be explained by saying there is a regressive gene on Lucy's side - we never met her Mum after all.

I do,'t think Peter looks any nationality other than Anglo Saxon, he just has a skin that tans easily. Lots of white people do.

They changed him a lot when he was a child i think - at one stage Linus roach, bill's actual son was playing him. I think it has only been 3 since he turned 16 and his last appearance before Gascoyne was cast in 2000 was at susan's wedding in 86.

Didnt David from Heartbeat play him at one point? - the same bloke who played Kirsty's father a year or so ago

Peter changed quite a lot as a child. He went from having an Mancunian Accent to a Scottish accent and now he has a slight Nottingham accent. Which is strange for someone who has spent about 20 years of their life in Portsmouth.

I think there was at least two boys who played Peter between 1965 and 1971, Linus Roache (who later played one of Ken's other sons!) played him briefly around 1973, Joseph McKenna (a fairly famous child actor of the time who had a prominent guest role in Survivors) played him in the late 70s, future Heartbeat star David Lonsdale (who's had at least two other roles in Corrie this century alone) played him in the 80s before Chris Gascoigne took over the role in 2000.

"Val" Barlow elecrocuted herself with a hairdryer but the actress Anne Reid is a well known face and was in Last Tango in Halifax amongst much else. Simon in the one who looks odd as he grows older, clearly mixed race with Afro hair and dusky skin, he is supposed to be the son of blonde Lucy and Peter when I suspect he is the secret son of Tony.

http://www.mirror.co.uk/3am/celebrit...-roache-243281

Here are Bill Roache's real life sons, admittedly by two different mothers. But they are totally different and neither looks like him.

Peter's mother was the lovely Valerie, played by white-skinned Anne Reid:

http://coronationstreet.wikia.com/wiki/Valerie_Barlow

Val was indeed electrocuted by a faulty hairdryer plug in 1971, on the day before the Barlows were supposed to emigrate to Jamaica. She was getting dressed for their going-away party in the Rovers, and was just off the phone to Ken who was hurrying her up. The maisonettes where they lived were demolished after a fire (the storyline had been conceived to write them out as the cast wasn't big enough to fill them) and the warehouse and community centre built.

Ken moved into No.3 (later the Bishops house) and tried to raise the twins by himself for the better part of a year, at one point hiring a nanny, before packing them off to Scotland to live with Val's parents. The early 70s was when he racked up most of his girlfriends as he planned to re-marry and send for the twins once he'd found them a new mother, ending up married to the wholly unsuitable Janet Reid in 1973.

Seven actors have played Peter:
John Heannau (1965-70)
Christopher Dormer (1970-1971)
Mark Duncan (1971)
Linus Roache (1973-1975)
Joseph McKenna (1977-1978) - the only one with a Scottish accent!
David Lonsdale (1986)
Chris Gascoyne (2000-2015)

Linus looks very much like Bill when he was younger.

Then after many years they came back,without a trace of a Scottish accent