Gladys Braithwaite (née Moorcroft) was an old friend of Audrey Roberts and the two had been best friends in their girlhood but had since lost touch. In July 2000, Alma Halliwell organised a surprise fifty-eighth birthday party for a depressed Audrey and Ken Barlow, the cause of her depression from his inadvertently publishing slanderous comments about the late Alf Roberts in the Weatherfield Gazette, agreed to track down Gladys who Audrey had not seen since she waved her off on her honeymoon in 1961.