Frank Barlow is a fictional character from the British ITV soap opera Coronation Street, played by Frank Pemberton. As the head of the show's core Barlow family, Frank was one of the original twenty-one characters at the show's inception in 1960, along with wife Ida (Noel Dyson) and sons Ken (William Roache) and David (Alan Rothwell). Pemberton never recovered from being made to leave a role he adored, and suffered a stroke in 1965. He found work increasingly hard to come by in the following years and suffered a fatal stroke in 1971, just a few weeks after his final appearance on the show.