asks her for directions. Her marriage to Ray fails, and by September 1978, he is having an affair with waitress Janice Stubbs (Angela Bruce). When Deirdre finds out, they decide to start afresh and emigrate to the Netherlands, where Ray has been offered a job, but at their farewell party two months later, Deirdre decides not to go and Ray leaves alone; they subsequently divorce. In 1979, Deirdre is touched when Sally Norton (Yvonne Nicholson) – who had been in the bed next to her when Deirdre was giving birth – brings Tracy a doll, but she makes excuses to stop Sally taking Tracy out. Later, Deirdre leaves Tracy outside the Rovers whilst she visits Annie for knitting patterns but they are disturbed by the sound of a crash and Deirdre finds a lorry outside has spilt a load of timber into the front of the Rovers, crushing the front of the pub. Deirdre hysterically claws at the timber screaming for Tracy, who she believed was underneath. Sally had been unstable since she had been persuaded by a social worker to put her daughter up for adoption shortly after the birth, and Deirdre later discovers she has taken Tracy, moments before the lorry crashed. After this, Deirdre dates Mike Baldwin (Johnny Briggs) and attempts to reconcile with Billy, but soon realises that she and Ken Barlow (William Roache) are better suited. In January 1980, she strongly hints to Ken that, if he proposed to her, she would not say no. This scares Ken away as he feels he is too old for her and he has been married twice already. A year later, after a further flirtation with Mike, she is reunited with Ken – until Deirdre has a fling with Dirk van der Stek (Lex van Delden), a colleague of Ray's. After Dirk leaves, she goes out for a meal with Ken and they agree to see more of each other without getting tied down. In 1981, more than 24 million viewers watched Deirdre's wedding to Ken Barlow (which generated higher ratings for ITV than the wedding of Prince of Wales to Lady Diana Spencer). Ken adopts Ray and Deirdre's daughter, Tracy, and they live with Ken's uncle-in-law Albert Tatlock (Jack Howarth) at Number 1. In February 1982, Deirdre suggests they have a baby but Ken firmly dismisses the idea and in May, there are a number of muggings