"Twas the night before Christmas and all through the house
Not a creature was stirring, not even Mavis"

It's Christmas Eve in Weatherfield but there is very little festive cheer in the Armstrong household. As usual, Trash is penniless and cannot afford to buy a turkey for Christmas dinner. Jameh hates to see his mum so depressed and hates even more the idea of yet another Kentucky Fried Christmas Dinner so leaves Trash weeping over her Terry Duckworth photograph and decides to appeal to the residents of Coronation Street for donations to help her afford a proper Christmas meal.

He knocks on Percy Sugden's door and explains his plan to raise funds for a Christmas spree at Firman's Freezers for his mum. Percy has no sense of Christmas spirit whatsoever and tells him to get lost. "Bah, humbug!" he reads off his cue cards, "we didn't have turkey in the trenches" and he slams the door in his face. Jameh calls him a miserable old scrooge and moves onto the next household.

Poor old Percy. He just hasn't been the same since the death of his 'partner' E-marley Bishop a few years earlier. He has become reclusive and bitter. He shuffles, grumbling, into his bedroom and is just beginning to nod off when he hears a loud clanking of chains and a lot of moaning and groaning. "Those Malletts ought to learn to bonk a bit quieter in their Santa's Nookie Nest" he scowls. However, he is mistaken in his assumption because very soon he is faced by an apparition of Emarley who is floating through his bedroom door. It is she who has been doing all the wailing. She looks frightful. She is totally white and her face looks tired, aged and drawn. In fact, she looks in worse nick than she ever did when she was alive (even during her funny spell when she went a bit demented and was found wandering the streets in her slippers and nightie). She is weighed down by a very heavy chain (even thicker than Gary Mallett's neck chain and about as mercilessly long as an Eastenders' omnibus edition).

Just as Percy is about to comment that she must have been forgetting to apply her Oil of Ulay again she booms out a terrible warning. "Each link on this terrible, heavy burden of a chain corresponds to a misdemeanour I made during my spell on Coronation Street. Bearing in mind that I was a religious, goody-goody hospital visitor and charity worker who hardly ever had a sniff of a storyline you can imagine how long your chain will be if you do not mend your ways, so think on!". She says that unless he alters his miserable attitude he'll end up in the same predicament. She advises that he will be visited by a number of other ghosts who will help alter his fiercely misanthropic outlook. Her most dreadful warning is yet to come however :- "If these spooks do not convince you to change your attitude then you will be visited ultimately by the pook. She will banish you forever to the flames of the ratuee newsgroup and an infinity of suffering and torture. Be afraid Percy, be VERY afraid!".

Emarley then disappears and Percy is left nervously waiting for the first of his phantom visitors. In fact he is shaking worse than Jim McDonald with the DTs when suddenly there is a gust of wind and the curtain blows even though the window is closed. There is a sudden chill in the air and Percy hears the clink of icecubes. He turns round to see the transparent shape of Ivy Brennan floating lopsidedly through the bedroom wall clutching a ghostly glass of gin. She appears to be having trouble maintaining a steady flight path and hovers with a wobble in the air over his drinks cabinet, trying to focus.

"Are you the Ghost of Christmas Past?" asks Percy, "I was warned that you would be coming". "No, love" she slurs. "you must (hic!) have mis-heard. I am the Ghost of Christmas Pissed and my warning to you is that you must carefully consider the results of your actions. Take my word for it, you are merely a very dispensable character actor and you can be written out at any time if you give the cast, writers and production staff any more trouble. Ask the Ghost of Reg Holsworth if you don't believe me! I speak from bitter experience - all that money I paid and now I find that big, luscious lips don't count for anything beyond the grave. It's so frustrating - if I weren't dead already then I'd kill myself! By the way, any sherry going? I know that old Emarley used to knock it back when no-one was looking". However, on finding the drinks cabinet empty Ivy's ghost drifts through he walls until she eventually reaches the Rover's Return where she fully intends to spend the rest of eternity with spirits of a different kind altogether.

Percy's next phantom visitor is Ena Sharples wearing a spectral hairnet, the real Ghost of Christmas Past. She flies him back in time to the Weatherfield of the Granada Gold reruns. They watch over some of those early scenes together. Ena says "Just look at the great past tradition of Coronation Street and contemplate what you have to lose. This is the golden age of The Street - strong characters with hopes and dreams, with strength and integrity, with courage in adversity and a fighting spirit, the scriptwriting is sharp and gritty. All of this and not a garden gnome in sight! You can't afford to take the history of CS for granted. Just think of those happy times when you had to fend off the advances of Phyllis Pearce. Those were the days". Percy feels a tug at his heartstrings and a tear in his eye as he witnesses some of those classic early scenes. Ena then says that his next visitor will be the Ghost of Christmas Present and says that in the meantime she'll just sit in a corner of his room and reminisce.

Enter Fred Elliott, the Ghost of Christmas Present, a larger-than-life figure carrying an abundance of fruit, wine, delicacies, several pounds of blood sausage and a couple of pig's feet. With Fred, Percy flies over to the household of the Platts where they are celebrating Christmas in the present day. He sees them at the table and even though the fare is meagre they are enjoying themselves immensely (despite having to spend money they couldn't afford on a proper festive log now that the Plank has left). They sing loudly round the Christmas dinner table :-

"Good King Wenceslas looked out,
Where's the Plank and Stephen?
They're in Canada right now
Bet they're bloody freezin'!".

Their small house is filled with the sound of laughter. Percy is particularly touched by the happiness of the cripple, Tiny Don. "What will happen in the future if things don't change?" he asks. Fred's face clouds over. "I see an empty chair in the corner and leaning against the wall is a dummy leg without an owner. So hurry up and do something to prevent that happening because we certainly don't want Don over on the "other side" along with us. So think carefully, I say think carefully". Fred tells Percy to expect the Ghost of Christmas Future and then goes over to Ena to ask her who gets her Granada Gold royalties now that she has passed on.

The next ghost is a tall, very pale, gaunt creature with sunken eyes, long, bony features and a cadaverous appearance. It's Liz McDonald. She is wearing an uncharacteristically long, black, shroud with a hood and looks like one of the "Scottish Widows" (one of the oldest ones). She takes Percy into the future. Liz explains "This is how things will be if you do not change your ways. What will happen is that you get more and more grumpy to the extent where you start annoying the viewers. Ratings plummet, Eastenders wins "top soap" for ten years running, advertising revenue drops and the programme is forced to seek more and more sponsorship money from that chocolate company. Of course, the chocolate company stumps up more money but demands much more of a say in the running of the programme as a result. Now, Percy, look and see the consequences of your actions". They reach the year 2021. She and Percy fly over the set of what is now "Cadbury-Nation Street". Percy almost doesn't recognise the place. There is a massive, flashing neon Cadbury sign hanging off the viaduct casting an eerie, luminous purple glow over the whole area. Each and every cobble on the street has been hand-painted to resemble a Cadbury's 'Creme Egg' and the shops have all been transformed. Jim's Caf has gone all futuristic and is now Jameh's Internet Cafe ("Drinking chocolate our speciality"), managed by Jameh and Sarah-Lou Armstrong. At opposite ends of the street are the Kadbury's Karamel Kabin and "Jack and Vera's Virtual Reality 'Boost' Bar". Percy is distraught to see that, after all these years, the "purple object" is still the beer barrel and is equally dismayed to hear the inhabitants gossip about the new Street characters - The Flakes, Mr and Mrs Crunchie and the new barmaid, Aero Bubble.

"This is an outrage!" bellows Percy, "the Street is virtually a laughing stock. How can they do this to such a great soap?". Liz retorts angrily "You are the one who did this Percy! If you hadn't been such a miserable old scrooge to begin with then the viewers would have stayed watching and The Street would still be at the top of the ratings and would have stayed in that same curious timewarp that it was always in, untouched by the real world". Percy wipes a tear from his eye and is riddled with guilt. He has been chilled by this disturbing view into the future and asks Liz to keep him company until he has regained his composure. "Nurrr" says the ghost, "are you crazy? Its Christmas!! I'm going to slip into something more festive and head for The Hourglass - it's Happy Hour all evening and if you float through the back wall you can get in without paying!". She then drifts back to Percy's front room to change into a bright red, rubber, mini-skirted party frock and dream of Paul's glamour tiara.

Just as Percy thinks it's all over yet more ghosts cram into his bedroom. First in is the Ghost of Samir. "Where is my Deee-dreee?". He floats round the house and crashes into the Ghost of Martha Longhurst who is wailing out a terrible warning about the dangers of The Snug on New Year's Eve. The Ghost of Annie Walker tours the house running her fingers along the shelves to check for dust and the Ghost of Stan Ogden settles down in front of the TV with a can of beer. The ghosts of Ena, Fred, Liz, Martha, Samir, Stan, Annie and Ivy (who got lost trying to find the Rover's cellar and has stumbled back through Percy's wall) start to argue about which of their appearances will be the biggest ratings winner and they create a noise worse than the wailing of a banshee (or the ghost of Carmel, the Irish nurse).

At this point Percy's bedroom resembles a Doris Stokes' houseparty and he reaches the end of his tether. "Get out all of you! I thought that the living were disagreeable but now I see that you lot are much worse. You pathetic shower have taught me a valuable lesson". The ghosts are taken aback, "But you've still to see the Ghost of Ernie Bishop and the Ghost of Maxine's Singing Career, both of which died ages ago!!". "I don't care" says Percy, "clear off all of you or I'll get that dodgy exorcist back to do his omnibus, minibus, trolleybus routine". Even Ena's ghost decides not to fight back, "Well, that's just typical!" she rages. "First bit of fun we've had since Halloween and he goes and spoils it". They all shrug their shoulders, grumble angrily and float out to follow the Ghost of Christmas Future to The Hourglass, muttering "You can say what you like about that hoor Liz McDonald but at least she's always the life and soul of the party!". Percy slumps onto his bed, totally exhausted, and drops into a deep sleep.

When he wakes up he finds that it is only Christmas Day! "Good grief, all that action must have taken place in a single CS episode. I pity the poor ratucs update writer for this storyline." Percy realises that he has been given a rare insight and a wonderful opportunity to alter his character and make a difference. So he arranges for Trash and Jameh to be sent a huge hamper, full of the kind of frivolous festive luxuries that they would not otherwise be able to enjoy, along with the traditional Christmas fare of turkey with all the trimmings. He rushes round to The Kabin and The Corner Shop to buy a huge box of chocolates (Swiss Lindt chocolates of course!) for every household on the street. He's feeling so magnanimous that he even donates a few pounds to carol singers (her from Rosamund Street). Percy then settles down with a brandy to watch the Queen's speech and a film on the telly ("Evil Dead III - Alan Bradley fights back") before heading into The Rovers to see what the scriptwriters have dreamt up for this year's major Christmas episode storyline...

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