Mrs Tattersall was a disgruntled constituent of Alf Roberts’ who had been complaining for three years about a garage business that had opened new her home on Bennett Street causing disruption with noise, double parking and swearing. Alf told her that their hands were tied due to the restricted powers of the planning committee. She stormed out of the Corner Shop and soon met Percy Sugden who took her to see Ken Barlow, then the editor of the Weatherfield Recorder. Ken listened with sympathy to her complaints and wrote a piece in the paper criticising the inaction of the independent councillors. This raised the ire of Alf who raged at Ken that the article was aimed at him and was potentially libellous.