Amanda Barrie Amanda Barrie was born Shirley Anne Broadbent on 14th September 1935 in Ashton - under - Lyne to accountant father Hubert Howath Broadbent and his wife Connie Pyke . Her family had a theatrical background as her grandfather owned a theatre . She was named after the film star Shirley Temple and she made her debut aged three playing a Christmas tree fairy at her family theatre . She took ballet and singing lessons as a child but was expelled from her St . Anne ' s college for skipping lessons for further ballet tuition . Her drama coaching took place at the Cone - Ripman School . At the age of thirteen she appeared in pantomime and in one performance danced off the stage and into the orchestra pit . Her parents divorced when she was thirteen and , as soon as she was able to , she moved to London working mostly as a chorus girl and dancer . She changed her name to Amanda Barrie in 1958 and made her TV debut in a " Morecambe and Wise " show . She had further drama training at the Bristol Old Vic but focused primarily on musical reviews although her range of stage performances included " Cabaret " ( as Sally Bowles ) , " Private Lives " , " Hobson ' s Choice " , " Any Wednesday " and " A Public Mischief " . She also started to make name for herself in comedy films , appearing in " A Pair of Briefs " . " Doctor in Distress " and " Carry on Cabby " and it was this latter role that led to possibly her most famous and well - known performance ( pre - " Coronation Street " ) when she was cast in the title role in the 1964 film " Carry on Cleo " . By the standards of the " Carry on … " series this film in the run was expensive and highly successful and Amanda ' s performance as the ditzy " femme fatale " won rave reviews . Her eclectic career continued to span stage , film and television work , the latter including dramas such as " The Wednesday Play " , " ITV Playhouse " , " Danger Man " and an appearance as Hermia in a 1971 BBC " Play of the Month " production of " A Midsummer Night ' s Dream " , but she also appeared in plenty of comedies including " The Many Wives of Patrick " , " Miss Jones and Son " and " Are You Being Served ? " , as well as , most notably , Whose Baby Are You ? , a second season episode of " Coronation Street " spin - off " Pardon the Expression " in 1966 . Continuing to work solidly through the 1970s , her next brush with Weatherfield came in June 1981 when she appeared in four episodes of " Coronation Street " as Alma Sedgewick , the workshy wife of café owner Jim Sedgewick who employed and then rowed with Elsie Tanner . Amanda has confessed on several occasions that she found acting opposite Patricia Phoenix to be a " terrifying ordeal " but she returned for a further eight episodes between April and June 1982 . Amanda was then absent from the " Street " for six years before returning as a regular in November 1988 when her character was involved in a series of storylines with Ken Barlow and Mike Baldwin who Alma eventually married , enduring a tempestuous relationship . She continued in the high - profile part until June 2001 when she left the programme , complaining that he found the " tragic " storylines in which she was involved to be not to her taste , much preferring the comic , gutsy version of Alma that she had first played . She was also vocal in condemning her character ' s exit as a victim of cervical cancer , stating that such cancers take a far longer time to spread than happened in the somewhat - concatenated timeline shown in the programme . Amanda went on to appear in several episodes of " Doctors " but also made forty - one episodes of the Brian Park - produced series " Bad Girls " ( 2003 - 2006 ) in which she played the somewhat - camp inmate Beverley Tull . She was also a guest panelist on " Loose Women " , appeared in " Holby City " and had an infamous altercation with chef Gordon Ramsay on reality cooking show " Hell ' s Kitchen " . In 2015 , she reunited with former " Street " colleague Sherrie Hewson in the hit ITV comedy " Benidorm " , thirty years after they first worked together in the original West End stage production of " Stepping Out " . Amanda was married to actor and director Robin Hunter in 1967 although they separated in the 1980s . An optic illness which built up in the late 1990s led to the loss of the sight in her left eye and in 2003 she published her autobiography " It ' s Not a Rehearsal " in which she revealed her bisexuality . She married her long - term partner - the crime writer Hilary Bonner - in September 2014 .