'You will see a Coronation Street like you've never seen before'

Phil Collinson took over as producer of Coronation Street in March, having watched the soap since he was a tot growing up first in Halton Moor and later Crossgates, Leeds. "My family was working class," he says. "We didn't go to the theatre. TV was the thing, and Corrie was the programme everybody talked about all the time, a sort of social glue binding people together." He's the first to admit that it's a little daunting, leading a programme that around 10 million people watch several times a week and think they own, through a monumental year with a 50th anniversary week coming up which is fraught with expectation. Both viewers and the television industry itself are waiting with bated breath to see what he and the team will pull out of the bag.

A big anniversary is an opportunity to shock. Collinson says: "You will see a Coronation Street like you've never seen before and it will never be the same again." Details strategically leaked so far include fire and computer-graphic-enhanced carnage after a tram crashes off the viaduct into Rita's newsagent shop The Kabin and Dev's corner shop.

The birthday week – the show first aired in early December, 1960 – will also include a birth and a marriage. As if that little lot were not enough, the high-octane drama will be ratcheted up a notch or two with a live episode. The mind boggles at the technical and logistical planning involved, but Collinson is rubbing his hands in glee. Maybe he's an adrenalin junkie; maybe he has to be. Filming organised chaos, as any action movie producer or director will tell you, requires nerves of steel.

A squad of special effects experts are already planning how the most cataclysmic day in soap history in years will be orchestrated to convey complete realism. Other worries include how to ensure that that something so huge is kept under wraps as far as possible.

"I want people to settle down in front of their telly on December 6 and let us tell them a story they haven't heard told in advance via the media, told in a spectacular yet human way. I hate leaks, and although I've told you a few things to create excitement in advance, there will be utter secrecy from now on because I think the drip, drip of leaks to the press just cheats the viewer. My heart sinks when I open a paper and see the stories.

"Each cast member will have a script that only shows their lines, on paper watermarked with their name. They will not see a whole script or be told about other storylines. I've really put my foot down. I hate to know what's coming when I'm watching some other show, and our viewers feel the same."

Collinson, who's 40, didn't start out with any ambition to work in television, and before leaving school he knew little about. He trained as a chef at Thomas Danby College in Leeds, but around that time a friend persuaded him to go along to a local drama group, Alwoodley Players. He finished his course, but then flabbergasted his parents with the news that he wanted to go to drama school.

"They were seriously worried, not seeing acting as something you could rely on earning a living from. But that didn't stop them supporting me. At 21 I went and did drama at Bretton Hall near Wakefield, and it changed my life."

He worked in rep in Liverpool for three years ("but never got the big parts"), and in 1996 put in a brief appearance as a mortgage advisor to Deirdre Barlow in one scene of Coronation Street. "I was terrible," says Phil. At that point he started to write and direct, initially for Theatre in Education. His break came as a script editor on Russell T Davies's off-beat ITV series Springhill, and went on to work alongside writers who were to become luminaries of gritty British drama.

"How lucky I was to find myself alongside people like Frank Cottrell-Boyce, Paul Abbott and Sally Braithwaite. "Emmerdale, Peak Practice, Linda Green and Born and Bred, first as writer then producer. In 2004, he landed one of the best jobs in British television, as producer of the revival of Dr Who, working again with Russell T Davies.

"It was fantastic to work on a show held in such affection by British viewers. Producing Coronation Street is even more so. It gives you a chance to speak to the nation in a way that no other job does. My ambition is to make it great from the moment it starts to the moment it ends. The pathos, the drama, the humour – it reflects real life, and people watch it to see stories like their own – especially when times are hard, as they are for many at the moment."

Collinson says that although TV audiences in general have declined over time ratings for the soaps have remained in rude health. "People seem to need that familiarity. They watch to see versions of themselves – but they also want surprises."