Life on Coronation Street isn’t going to be the same when Eileen Grimshaw leaves the grey skies of Manchester to start a new life in Thailand.
Eileen first appeared in Coronation Street on 3 May 2000. She had hired a cab to go to a job interview when Street Cars driver Vikram Desai (Emmerdale's Chris Bisson) noticed how clued up she was when it came to the streets of Weatherfield so he offered her a job at the taxi firm, which is where she's mostly worked ever since!
Having been a fixture in Coronation Street for 25 years, Eileen's certainly had a fair share of drama, mostly when it comes to dealing with the fallout of the many scrapes that her sons Jason (Ryan Thomas) and Todd (Bruno Langley and Gareth Pierce) have got themselves into!
And when she hasn’t been contending with her boys’ shenanigans, she’s had plenty of her own troubles, usually when it comes to men!
Over the years, she’s had a string of failed relationships with the likes of former Hell’s Angel and mechanic Dennis Stringer (Charles Dale); firefighter Paul Kershaw (Tony Hirst); children’s entertainer Jesse Chadwick (John Thompson); reformed burglar Michael Rodwell (Les Dennis); and armed robber-turned-born again Christian, Ed Jackson (Chris Walker).
Eileen did make it down the aisle once, but her marriage to builder Pat Phelan (Connor McIntyre) was doomed because 12 months after tying the knot, she discovered he was a serial killer psycho!
On top of all that she’s been a mother figure to numerous lodgers – including Mary Taylor (Patti Clare) and Sean Tully (Antony Cotton) – at No.11 and has had a long-standing and very entertaining rivalry with neighbour Gail Chadwick (Helen Worth).
But with actor Sue Cleaver having decided to leave the role to pursue some new adventures, Eileen’s decided to start a new life in Thailand, where Jason runs a bar and will say goodbye to Coronation Street in the episode due to air on Friday, 6 June.
As we bid farewell to the Corrie character, we look back at some of her best bits from the last 25 years…
1. Eileen and Gail’s fight on the cobbles
Eileen earned her status as a Corrie icon in 2004 when her rivalry with Gail spilled out onto the cobbles. At the time, Gail’s daughter Sarah (Tina O'Brien) was in a relationship with Eileen’s son Todd and the pair had been living together.
Eileen thought Sarah was holding back Todd, who had decided against going to university to be with his girlfriend. When Sarah got pregnant, Todd was all set to marry her… until Todd realised he was gay and started a secret affair with male nurse Karl Foster (Chris Finch).
When the truth came out, Gail – still dressed in her nightwear – went across the street to have a go at Todd but ended up brawling with his mum instead. There was name-calling, there was hair-pulling and it was ICONIC.
2. Eileen and Steve’s holiday in Malta
Eileen agreed to go on holiday with her Street Cars boss Steve McDonald (Simon Gregson) in 2007, but things didn’t get off to a great start when they arrived on the sunny Mediterranean island and couldn’t find anywhere to stay. Eventually, Steve found them a room but Eileen was horrified that they would have to share a double bed, so she tried sleeping on the floor. However, it was so uncomfortable she ended up getting into the bed next to a drunken Steve, who had passed out.
The next morning, Steve had no recollection of what had happened and worried that he had got jiggy with Eileen, who enjoyed winding him up about it! Meanwhile, after Steve ruined Eileen’s chances of enjoying a fling with holiday rep Aidan (Robin Askwith), he got flirty with fellow holidaymaker Shania (Anthony Sean Berry) and got a bit of shock when he ended up in her hotel room…
3. Eileen's Christmas Day Baby
In 2006, Eileen got an unexpected gift on Christmas Day when a young woman called Emma (played by Hollyoaks star Stephanie Waring) turned up on the doorstep of No.11 with a baby and claimed that Jason was the newborn’s dad.
Even though Jason swore blind that the kid wasn’t his, Eileen ended up looking after the baby and named her Holly.
A few months later, Eileen got a shock when Emma returned and revealed that her baby’s father was actually Jason’s boss Charlie Stubbs (Bill Ward), who had been murdered by Tracy Barlow (Kate Ford) some months before.
After seeing Charlie’s picture on the front page of a newspaper, Emma realised that he had used Jason’s name when they met. So after giving birth to Holly, her search for Charlie led her to No. 11.
When Emma said that she wanted her baby back, Eileen refused and threw her out of the house.
Eventually, Social Services got involved and Eileen planned to run away with Holly, until Gail rumbled her plan and talked to her round, arguing that the best place for the tot was with her mum. Four months after taking in the baby, Eileen handed her back to Emma on 25 April 2007.
4. Eileen discovers she has a sister
When Julie Carp (Katy Cavanagh) arrived in Weatherfield in 2008 after enjoying a holiday romance with Kirk Sutherland (Andy Whyment), no one suspected that the eccentric divorcée was related to Eileen.
It turned out that Julie’s mum Paula (Sharon Duce) was an old friend of Eileen’s who had got pregnant when she was 14 and moved away from the area.
When Paula found out that her daughter – who was now single after dumping Kirk – was pursuing Jason, she turned up drunk at the 70th birthday party of Eileen’s dad Colin (Edward de Souza) to nip the romance in the bud.
As the mum and daughter rowed, Paula announced that Julie and Jason couldn’t be together because they were related.
Although Colin tried to get Paula to leave before she revealed any more, she told the whole pub that he was Julie’s father.
When Paula reported Colin to the police, he had a stroke and Eileen took care of him at No. 11.
Colin died shortly afterwards and the sisters grew closer as Julie was welcomed into the Grimshaw family fold.
Julie left Weatherfield in 2015 and returned ten years later with the devastating news that she had terminal cancer. She passed away in May 2025 while enjoying a day out with Eileen.
5. Eileen pushes Pat Phelan to his death!
As mentioned above, Eileen’s had quite a few romances since she turned up in Coronation Street, but she’s only been married once.
Of all the men she’s been romantically involved with, she chose the worst of the lot to walk down the aisle with when she married builder Pat Phelan in 2017.
Among his crimes were fleecing Owen Armstrong (Ian Puleston-Davies) out of his share of the business they had together and blackmailing Owen’s partner Anna Windass (Debbie Rush) into having sex with him when he threatened to reveal that her son Gary (Mikey North) had attacked him and left him for dead. He was also behind a scam involving selling flats that were never going to be built to various locals and he was responsible for four deaths as he tried to cover his tracks…
He watched Michael Rodwell die from a heart attack after rumbling the flats scam, murdered Andy Carver (Oliver Farnworth) and Luke Britton (Dean Fagan) for knowing too much and finally his dodgy business partner Vinny Ashford (Ian Kelsey), who had betrayed him by running off with the scam’s proceeds.
A year into the marriage, Eileen finally discovered the truth about her husband which led to a showdown by a lighthouse where she ended up pushing him into the sea, seemingly to his death…
Later, however, it was revealed that Phelan had survived when he turned up at the wedding of Michelle Connor (Kym Marsh) and Robert Preston (Tristan Gemmill) in the Bistro and took various locals hostage. But he was soon finished off for good when a vengeful Anna turned up out of the blue and killed him!
Coronation Street airs hour-long episodes on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays at 8 pm on ITV1 — see our TV Guide for full listings. You can also catch up on episodes on ITV
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