Live from the set of Coronation Street

How many women has Coronation Street's Ken Barlow had in his life? Just one of the many pressing questions mulled over on the train up to Weatherfield by Richard Bacon's production team.

The answer came from the man who plays Ken, William Roache, when he chatted to Richard in the Rovers Return last Wednesday. Tony Warren, the man who created the show, was also there. To find out how many women it was, you can listen back to the show here.

William and Tony have worked on the show since it started, and to have them talking together was just one of the highlights of a very special show. For the entire two hours Richard was live from Britain's best loved street, speaking to cast members, producers and writers in the only radio show of its kind to mark Corrie's 50th anniversary. Perhaps it's because Richard himself is on the list of famous fans - along with Snoop Dogg, Noel Gallagher and Peter Schmeichel - that we were given such exclusive access.

I'd been working on setting up the show since the summer, but until about an hour before we went on air, I didn't even know exactly who we'd have, and where we could broadcast from. In fact, even as the show was on air, we still didn't know whether we'd speak to William Roache, or whether others would still be stuck in traffic. The people at ITV told me to have faith, to be prepared to change things at the last minute, and that we'd have a great show. Well, have faith we did, and Richard's really good at adapting at short notice.

The people at Corrie were true to their word. We had Sally Dynevor (who plays Sally Webster and is a huge 5 live fan) with Richard for the whole show, along with one of the producers. We opened the show live from the cobbles, again something we didn't know we'd be allowed to do until just before we went on air. Even then, a minute before the show started, Ryan Thomas, who plays Jason Grimshaw, strolled up in full costume after just shooting a scene.

It was all pretty surreal, and on more than one occasion I had to stop myself calling people by their character names. After all, when I set this up, all my wish list entries were by character name, and the cast are very much used to this. In fact, William Roache told us that mothers would tell their children to 'come away from him' when they saw him in the street, because he was up to no good in a soap storyline. The lines were very much blurred between reality and fiction on this Wednesday afternoon in Manchester.

We spent the rest of the show in the Rovers, and Sally was joined by the rest of her family - Brooke Vincent (Sophie Webster), Sasha Parkinson (Sian Powers) and Michael Le Vell (Kevin Webster) all sat round the table in the pub. There was a great moment when Sally and Kevin had a dispute in full character and we had some great pre-recorded material of Richard going round the set, having a glimpse at the post tram-crash future and hearing fascinating insights from Anthony Cotton (Sean Tully) and Michelle Keegan (Tina McIntyre).

But while producing the show was seat-of-the-pants stuff, the two biggest challenges we actually faced were containing our excitement and not giving things away about future episodes. As we walked round the set in the morning and met members of the cast in the green room, we found out some stuff that'll happen after the tram crash. One thing I can reveal is that a major character is still there. I only say this because he walked off set declaring he needed some deodorant as he was 'humming a bit'.

Wednesday was a fascinating, exciting and revealing day which, above all, made two hours of fantastic radio. What came across is that everyone working on Corrie absolutely loves the show. It's been a huge part of British telly for half a century, and we were really pleased to have seen how it's all put together.

Mick Tucker is a producer on the Richard Bacon show

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