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COROnation Street Civic Theatre, Auckland

A giggling gaggle of women a third his age cluster around William Roache at the bar. Freshly lipsticked and highly coiffed, they hone in on the star of the COROnation Street stage show after its opening night like birds do to prey.

They want another photo with him. They want to snuggle up real close for their own personal encounter with the tousle-haired actor.

Roache, a glint in his 80-year- old eyes, obliges.

The older audience members - and there are many many pensioners - are equally fawning.

Loitering in the Auckland Civic Theatre's lobby to catch a glimpse of him, their adulation is palpable. He's been in their front rooms for half a century. His unyielding dullness filling our screens and, apparently, fuelling some pretty intense fantasies for some viewers. Seeing him in the flesh must be quite surreal.

Roache links arms with one after the other, smiling, kissing, signing. Maybe the actor really has bedded the thousand or more women he alluded to in the press last year.

As Roache himself said: "There's life in the old dog yet!"

Any thought to the controversy Roache stirred up in recent weeks - he implied victims of sexual abuse are paying for past sins - appears to matter not to any of these Street-struck fans.

His second newsworthy comment, flirting with a daytime TV presenter last month telling her of his urge to smack her bottom "You naughty girl", seems only to have added fuel to this playboy's fire.

Go here to see the original:
COROnation show: The word on the street