Sally Waterman Sally Waterman was secretary at the " Weatherfield Recorder " when Ken Barlow bought into a partnership with Bob Statham in November 1983 . Ken became Statham ' s press baron and editor of the freesheet , taking over from Pamela Mitchell , and Sally worked alongside him in the " Recorder " office . Sally ' s first clash with her new boss came when Ken tried to use the paper in his vendetta against Mike Baldwin by not letting him advertise his Graffiti Club . Statham forced Ken ' s hand and told him to write a piece about the club . When Ken wrote a deliberately underwhelming article , Sally alerted Statham who forced him to rewrite it , speaking about Mike in glowing terms . Sally had never written for the paper but Ken saw potential in her as a reporter and in January 1984 got her to interview Stan and Hilda Ogden when they made a compensation claim against the council when Stan stubbed his toe on a loose paving stone . Sally took to it right away and started investigating stories she thought would interest the public . In June , she wrote a piece about Curly Watts spotting a UFO on his telescope , but her article didn ' t go down well with Curly as he thought he ' d been portrayed as a loony . However , local radio and a national newspaper took an interest in the story and to make it up to Curly Sally agreed to print his word - for - word account of what really happened . The following month , Sally found out that Councillor Alf Roberts had stopped plans for a shopping plaza being built and wrote an article accusing him of being biased because the plaza would hurt trade at his shop . Ken recognised it as a good piece of journalism but refused to print it in full as Alf could sue . Sally thought the real reason was that Ken didn ' t want to upset Alf and , believing that people had a right to know the truth , sold the story to the " Gazette " . Ken warned Sally that if she went behind his back again he ' d fire her . In September , Sally started going out with Billy Walker . Ken was against it and admitted the reason was that he had feelings for Sally . Sally reciprocated his feelings and they kissed but Ken forced himself to stay faithful to Deirdre . Sally decided to dump Billy as he was too serious about her , but once jilted a jealous Billy tried to cause trouble by hinting to Deirdre that there was more to Ken and Sally ' s relationship than she knew about . Deirdre confronted Sally and asked if they were having an affair . Sally told Deirdre the truth , and accused her of wanting Ken to stray . Ken convinced Deirdre he ' d been faithful but despite Deirdre ' s feelings about Sally , and Sally ' s offer to resign to make things easier for him , Ken kept Sally on , feeling they were mature enough to ignore their feelings . In February 1985 , Sally applied for a job as trainee reporter at the " Gazette " . Her last job for Ken was interviewing Mavis Riley about winning a second honeymoon from Modern Bride magazine . Mavis admitted she ' d never had a first honeymoon and to avoid embarrassing her Sally promised not to run the story in the " Recorder " , but she did give the story to the " Gazette " , upsetting Mavis all the same . Sally ' s excuse that she kept her promise didn ' t hold water with Ken , who told her to leave the " Recorder " immediately as she ' d already handed in her notice after getting the " Gazette " job . Sally was unapologetic , telling Ken that hurting people was unavoidable in real journalism .