Ena was real

When I was a child I was pretty sure that Ena Sharples of Coronation Street was real and not a fictional character. That set me thinking about other folks we encounter as children who may be other than real and indeed other characters, fictional or otherwise(?) who have come to be regarded as real and that can happen at any age. It's the thin edge of a large and unreal wedge. Come to think of it my old granny thought Ena and the rest of the cast were real (or at least she kept up that pretense from the start of the show till she died in 1980 or thereabouts). Perhaps my subconscious was too alert as a nipper but my sense of real life more blunted ... so Martha Longhurst, Minnie Caldwell and that lovable scoundrel Len Fairclough were just ordinary, everyday working folks who participated in an early version of reality TV. The only one who wasn't real of course was Elsie Tanner as she was the fictional mother in law of that fictional Tony Blair fellow.