Ken, for so long the Street's oxymoronic intellectual, despite a witless job career involving supermarket trolleys and serving sandwiches, recently attended his university reunion, where, surrounded by high achievers and an old flame who is now a married librarian, suddenly felt strangely inadequate.
He raced home and exhumed his moth-tasted tome, and is now feverishly completing it.
Coro fans are beside themselves, and not without reason - I would pay $99.95 a page to read Ken Barlow's book.
And yes, the married librarian.
Will the septuagenarian Ken add her to his dizzying belt of notches? The writers just dangled this too-young-for-Ken woman in front of us for an instant and then whooshed her away.
Surely she will return.
And this would be a good thing.
As Oscar Wilde once said, and I'm paraphrasing, anything that makes Deidre angry is fine by me.
Unlike many, I love Ken Barlow.
He is one of British television's finest comedic actors, rarely have so many laughed so loud at so little.
It's been a strange year for Coro.
Many of the more recent characters have been awful.
The doner-kebab family should have been drowned at birth, ideally in a bucket of their own kebab oil.
And Gail's gay father, Ted, is the second-worst actor on television, behind the East European machinist in Underworld.
What on earth is she doing in this show? What is her name? She must have slept with someone very important to mustelid her way into something as iconic as Coronation Street.
The father and son bookies are a loathsome pair.
The son at least has been suitably thrown at Leanne, the former lady of the night, who was also a lady of the day.
And have I mentioned the intellectually waxen Michelle?Are the show's producers doing due diligence on all these people? Other characters have changed radically, though this is acceptable in a soap.
Dev, once suave and able to seduce a parking meter, has become a yelping affectatious over-actor, growing older and stupider in a corner store, like an Indian Norris.
But last week he was mercifully saddled up with the magnate Prem's wife, she being the Bollywood star whose posters covered Dev's wall when he was a teenager lying in bed meditating.
She looks late 60s.
You still look the same, purred Dev as he put a "closed" sign on the corner shop door.
Steve is also over-acting hopelessly.
He was cool once, a street-smart wide boy, women loved him.
Now he is wet, indecisive and clueless.
He has even abandoned crime.
But again, in a writing masterstroke, he was put in the bed of Becky, who has rewritten The Book of Cheap first published by Steve's mum, Liz.
These two are so well-matched.
But seven truly great characters remain.
Becky has proved there is life after prison, she is dazzling.
Dev's daughter Amber, once young and painfully needy, is now droll and cuttingly smart.
She has beautiful lines, as does the wretched Deidre's wretched mother Blanche.
I hiss this through clenched teeth, but Blanche is now a great character.
Tyrone remains loveable because he is so thick - his marriage proposal to Molly made me cry - and Kirk is even more loveable, simply because he is even more thick.
His ex-partner Fiz is still wonderful, brilliant voice, brilliant hair, brilliant things stuck in hair.
And finally Vernon.
He may have an absurd musical pedigree and a brain no bigger than a wasabi pea, but his bewildered face is Best In Show.
Every village needs its idiot.
Coronation Street turns 49 in three weeks.
In a world of worthless television, this is a remarkable thing.
It has been a series where the memorable has always overcome the mediocre.
We can only hope Ken's book will be the same.
