I had scenes which did not always sit comfortably with me... was it right I was expected to parade around in my knickers at 16?

Former street star Helen Flanagan on how Corrie sexualised her when she was a teen

- By Hannah Britt

Helen Flanagan has revealed sexualised storylines she was given in Corrie as a teenager before the Me Too movement made her feel uncomfortable.

The actor was just 16 when her character Rosie Webster, daughter of Sally and Kevin, had an underage affair with her teacher.

At 15, even younger than Helen was at the time, Rosie was shown "seducing" John Stape, played by Graeme Hawley, who later kidnapped her and held her hostage after the affair was exposed.

Now 35, Helen is raising questions around the scenes she got and the way she was portrayed in the soap, which she joined aged nine.

The actress says: "Was it morally right that I was expected to parade about in my knickers like some mad nymphomaniac when I was still just a teenager?

"Alison King, who plays Carla Connor, once kicked off in the green room, saying how disgusting it was that they were sexualising me when I was a young girl. I didn't fully comprehend what she was talking about at the time. I do now. I get it.

"I had to do kissing and bedroom scenes with a man a lot older than me. Obviously the actor [Graeme Hawley] was lovely, but I don't think it would happen now.

"When you're 16 you don't really know what's going on and I was just happy to get the big storylines.

"But I had scenes as Rosie which didn't always sit comfortably with me. I felt minging post-shoot.

"Everything has changed now, which I'm glad about.

They wouldn't write it in quite the same way all these years later and since the Me Too movement."

Mum-of-three Helen finds her current role quite different. She is playing Catherine in the Shelagh Stephenson play The Memory of Water, which opens today at Bolton's Octagon Theatre.

And now she has an intimacy co-ordinator, to make sure she is comfortable with everything. "Back then you just got on with it," she says of her Corrie days.