Corrie's Jane Hazlegrove: 'My wife and I still face homophobia every day - but I just smile'

Even after meeting the love of her life, Coronation Street actress Jane Hazlegrove never imagined she’d ever tie the knot.

Jane and fellow actress Isobel Middleton fell in love after a chance meeting 30 years ago. But with same-sex weddings outlawed in Britain, their own big day seemed an impossible dream. Now the couple are preparing to celebrate their 10th wedding anniversary and Jane admits it’s a day she could never have hoped for when she was younger.

“I love a wedding, but I never thought that I’d actually get to have my own big party, full of all the people that I love and lots of laughter,” she says.

“It was a beautiful thing and a bit of a shock. I still can’t believe it and I’m so proud that we’ve done it and I’m so proud of my love for Isobel. It’s my greatest achievement, regardless of the career.

“I just can’t believe that I’m allowed to love this woman and live the life that I live without being persecuted and hounded. Yes, you still meet homophobia every day, but I just smile at the homophobes and try to educate them and lead from the front.”

Jane joined Coronation Street in 2019 as chaotic Bernie Winter, the mother of twins Gemma and Paul.

And as she prepares to mark her own wedding anniversary, she’s about to enjoy a screen wedding too, as Bernie ties the knot with corner shop owner Dev Alahan.

In the world of soap however, weddings rarely go according to plan. And with Bernie and Dev’s big day no exception, it remains to be seen whether the happy couple actually get to say ‘I do’.

Firstly, Bernie’s grandchildren, the quads, fall ill and have to watch the wedding with their brother Joseph on a live stream. Then Bernie forgets her lucky charm locket, but when she runs home from the bistro to get it, she disturbs a burglar.

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“Everything goes wrong,” Jane laughs. “First the quads fall ill and can’t attend, and then when she gets to the wedding, she develops an allergy and collapses. It’s pretty serious. She can’t breathe and she’s taken away to hospital in an ambulance.”

While Jane can’t give away whether Bernie gets her happily-ever-after, she can reveal what her character wears for her big day - and in typical Bernie-style, it’s far from conventional.

“I’m mad about the singer Elkie Brookes,” Jane explains. “I adore her and have done since I was a nipper.

“It was Elkie’s birthday just before we started filming my screen wedding and I was watching a load of stuff about her on television on the Old Grey Whistle Test. She was wearing a rather fabulous kaftan and I thought, ‘that’s got to be Bernie’s wedding dress’.

“So, I went down to our brilliant costume department and said: ‘Can I please look like Elkie Brookes on acid?’ and that’s what we’ve come up with!

“The dress is white and it’s a bit Demis Roussos as well, so anybody who remembers the 1970s is going to watch it and go, ‘oh my good Lord!’ It’s exactly what I wanted and it looks brilliant. I’m really chuffed with what the costume department have come up with - they’ve done a brilliant job.”

Jane, who grew up in Manchester, began acting at a young age and made her TV debut at 13 in the Yorkshire TV series The Book Tower.

Then in the 1980s, when she was 16, she joined Coronation Street as teenager Sue Clayton, staying in the show for a year. Since then, she has worked on a host of other TV series, most notably Casualty, where she spent eight years as paramedic Kathleen Dixon.

She was thrilled to return to the cobbles 34 years as off-the-wall café worker Bernie, a character who has divided viewers, with many shocked over her poor mothering skills to Gemma, Paul and long-lost son Kit.

But Jane insists that Bernie’s pairing with Dev has changed her. “Bernie and Dev are chalk and cheese, but he’s just incredibly kind to her and I don’t think Bernie has had a lot of kindness from men over the years,” she explains.

“Their relationship is not without problems, because she acts so impulsively through her heart and eventually it gets up to her brain, and he’s the opposite. He’s a great big deep thinker, so it shouldn’t work on paper, but it does.”

Jane, 56, and Isobel, 58, live in Derbyshire where Jane enjoys spending time walking in the Derbyshire hills and indulging her passion for classic cars. “I’ve got a 1969 MGC. She’s lovely - driving her makes me very happy,” she smiles.

“I’ve had her for 18 years. I called her Lulu because Lulu was No 1 when she came off the conveyor belt.”

The couple met in 1995 when Jane starred in the sell-out play Boom Bang-a-Bang at London’s Bush Theatre. “It was directed by Kathy Burke and loads of big television people came to see it,” she recalls. “Isobel came to see it one night and we started chatting afterwards.”

The couple became civil partners in 2010. Jane recalls: “Same-sex marriage wasn’t allowed for many years because we were two women, so we had a civil partnership.

“We held it on a boat in Bristol – it was amazing – I was all dressed up and wore a really nice frock.

“We decided to do it because Isobel had been unwell. She was in London and I was in Bristol working on Casualty, and I wasn’t allowed to know anything about what was going on with her operations and hospital treatment. I was just seen as her friend, even though we’d been lovers for ten years. They weren’t allowed to tell me. So, we did the civil partnership because we thought, ‘no-one can touch us then’.

“The wedding was five years later at a Bristol register office. I didn’t want to do it originally. I didn’t want to do it just because the government now said we could. I’ve never been part of a gang, I like to think of myself as being someone who doesn’t conform.

“So, we didn’t tell anybody, we just went and did it ourselves. All we had to do was take a gas bill and upgrade! Really romantic! We then invited six friends around for a curry.”

Jane feels strongly that gay men and women around the world should enjoy the same rights and happiness as she does, and she is a passionate member of All Out, a global political campaign group fighting for LGBT+ rights around the world.

“Gay Pride was banned in Hungary this year,” she says. “Visibility is key. There are so many men and women like me who can’t be with their loved ones, because somebody has decided that it’s unacceptable. That’s just abhorrent.”

While Jane has made her name at Coronation Street, wife Isobel works on the other side of the Pennines in Emmerdale, where she plays village detective DI Roberts.

But she has also appeared on the cobbles too, in a cameo as feminist author Persephone Braxton, who held a book launch in Roy’s Rolls in 2022.

“I wanted to come in and be her chaperone for the day, but she was having none of it,” Jane recalls with a laugh. “She was in the café chatting with Ken Barlow and there was a fight when Tracy comes in and catches him with his mistress.

“I wasn’t in work that day unfortunately. Probably just as well, I don’t think her character would have liked Bernie very much!”

*For further information on All Out’s work and campaigns go to: allout.org