Patti Clare: 'I begged for a Corrie role'

Patti Clare has admitted that she was obsessed with joining the cast of Coronation Street.

Clare, who plays Mary Taylor in the ITV soap, told The Mirror that she had been knocked back by the show's casting director on many occasions.

"I used to write and write to the casting director asking for a job and he'd write back saying, 'Nothing doing at the moment'," she revealed. "I could really see myself in Corrie and was very persistent."

She confessed that she had been so desperate to land a role that she had created a new character and written a scene for her.

"So I wrote him a scene making up a character for myself called Cherise, who was to be Raquel's half-sister," she said. "She sat in the bar and didn't say anything and wore glasses and was quite dowdy and then Raquel gives her a make-over.

"I thought it was brilliant, but he wrote back and said, 'No, no, no, no, no, it's not going to happen'."

Clare's luck changed in 2008 when she was working as an office receptionist and was offered the role of Mary. However, the character was originally only wanted for five episodes.

"I had a lot of theatre experience, but I'd wanted to go into television for a while. I was told I had to take a gamble for a year and turn theatre work down and sit it out," she explained. "It was terrible. I didn't do any acting for nine months so I worked in an office and the job came in the September."

Clare will appear in the soap's 50th anniversary DVD, which will see Kevin Kennedy and Ken Morley reprise their Corrie roles.