Greetings and welcome to another weekly update. This
week the update is wearing magic pants and looks rather pert.
And so without any further ado, here we go with this week's Coronation
Street update.
After Vera's fuss in the bingo last week when lost her golden bingo
balls, Sean gets suspended from his job. The poor love doesn't know
what to do with himself but gets reinstated in time for Golden Pot night
when nationwide Alhambras link up and play for the big money prize
of twenty-five thousand pounds. As he's calling out the numbers Sean camps
it up in his sparkly lilac jacket with Lallies 11 and Big Ben 10.
Vera's not happy and in front of a packed bingo hall she calls him a poofter.
Sean walks out in a rage with his sparkles in a storm and resigns from
the job.
Craig and granddad muddle along in the house as Angela has the murder
charges dropped against her in jail. But she pleads guilty to perverting
the course of justice and tells Craig he'll be without as she faces
four years within. Where's Googie Withers when you need her?
Craig doesn't know what's hit him and granddad does his best to keep going
what little family life Craig has left but it's not easy for either
of them and this is probably the strongest, best storyline that Corrie has
at the moment. When Craig's goth music pounds through the walls
to the Peacock's next door, Claire has strong words with Craig, buys
him some headphones and tells him she knows a little of what he's going
through as her father died when she was his age.
Chesney's missing his mum so Roy decides to take him to Spain to seek
out Cilla and Les. As they arrive at the airport, Cilla and Les
are on their way home but Cilla's well hidden behind a straw donkey
and a sombrero and none of them notice the other. With Cilla
"Buenos Nachos!" and Les relaxing at the Cropper's flat, Hayley's upset at
what's happened, particularly that Cilla hasn't missed Chesney at
all. Hayley wants to call the airport to stop Roy and Chesney boarding
the plane to Spain but Cilla warns her that if she does, she'll
call the rozzers and tell them Roy's abducted her son. Anyway, Roy
and Chesney miss their flight and return to the flat where Cilla pretends
she's glad to be reunited with her son. The Croppers are heavy-hearted
and say goodbye to Chesney after Cilla makes on that she called Roy
from Spain to tell him she'd be back to pick up Chesney. Roy decides
not to argue, thinking it far better for Chesney to believe his mother loves
him than to know the truth.
And finally this week, Sir Ian McKellen joined the cast as Mel Hutchwright,
author of Hard Grinding, the book of choice for the Weatherfield Book
Club. At its meeting in the café, the book club greet Mel
after Blanche had written him a letter. Ken sees through Mel's
tall-tales and lecherous charm but the ladies of the book club
and indeed Norris are taken in by the whiff of genius on the cobbles
and gasp in awe over Mel's stories: "So I said to Mr Speilberg, if
you're not going to set it in Lancashire, then leave it." Rita, Blanche
and Emily giggle like schoolgirls and who can blame them when he comes out
with lines like: "Beautify yourself, Emily, and escort me to
the pub. I require a muse." Mel's broke and has writer's block so ends
up staying in Emily's front room until his writing hand finds momentum. Norris
decides he'll write a book too and hangs onto Mel's every word for inspiration,
there's nothing he won't do for the man so when Mel gives him a list of
shopping he needs to get the creative juice flowing, Norris
sets out to help although he has a bit of trouble locating the absinthe.
And elsewhere on the street this week – at Davenport's garage things
are tense for Sally and Ian. She's jealous he had an affair with the temp
and he continues to be as creepy as ever. Jack's pigeons go
awol and Danny and Leanne come this close to snogging. The two events
could be related, who knows? And workmen are spotted in the Hardware
Store.
And that's just about that for this week.
Glenda
Greetings and welcome to another weekly update. This week's
update comes with an extra serving of chips and an apology that it's being
sent out very late. This is due to reasons both too complicated to
explain and too difficult to spell. But anyway, here I am at last and
without any further ado here we go with this week's Coronation Street update.
Deciding to crack on with her media career, Candice applies to join a
TV presenting course and it only takes three hundred of her earth pounds
to join. Trouble is, she's skint and Audrey sends her away with a flea
in her ear after she goes there with the begging bowl. Fortunately,
Frankie offers to pay for the course which comes with A-list endorsement
straight from the mouth of Claire Smilie, presenter, apparently, of Celebrities
and Their Bins and you don't get more A-list than that. At least not round
here. Warren's footballer mate's wife gets Candice a trial at the local
radio station so up she goes in the helicopter to be the eye in the sky.
Back on the cobbles everyone's tuned in to hear Candice on the radio doing
her bit. "There's a lot of traffic going this way" she says "But there's
more traffic going the other way so if I were you, I wouldn't go that way"
before the air turbulence wreaks its revenge on her belly and Candice throws
up, live, down the airwaves.
Back on the street, Les and Cilla need work and Les starts back on the
cabs, much to Steve's surprise. Cilla goes back to the Weatherfield
Arms and isn't best pleased to find Liz has been promoted to bar manageress
who tells Cilla there's no job there for her. She ends up taking a
job at the chippy on the Street and Les and Chesney think they've died and
gone to chip heaven. Rocky, the owner, doesn't speak English and Cilla's
mastery of Chinese isn't too hot either so they end up yelling and flinging
stuff at each other before Rocky chases Cilla down the cobbles with a fish
fryer. The locals are in their element, making the most of Cilla's
embarassment behind the fish shop counter and call her CodCilla, her face
turning clarty-brown from the sunbed Les bought her from Charlie West to
top up her tan. Then things start to go wrong at the Battersby's -
the fridge door falls off, the immersion's on the blink, only one ring on
the cooker works and the toaster's on the fritz so Cilla decides Les has
to ask her to marry him. That way they'll be sure to get loads of free gifts,
household white goods preferred, from friends and neighbours. With
Les down on one knee Cilla accepts his proposal to be the 3rd Mrs. B.
Chesney tells Rita the truth behind the wedding and soon the news spreads
so that wedding invitations get thrown back at the happy couple.
Angela's dad Keith Appleyard gets his feet well and truly under the table
when he gets accepted onto the cobbles. He's got Emily doing his washing
and baking him casseroles and pies as well as Audrey and Hayley popping
in to to see if there's anything they can do. Sunita helps him out in the
corner shop and even Martin's offered to take him on a fishing trip.
Keith's gentle charm seems to be working to soothe Craig who returned to
school this week after the massacre of his father, the suicide of his sister
and the incarceration of his mother. Never mind bereavement counselling
or being emotionally scarred for life, have one of Emily's pies, lad, that'll
do the trick.
At Davenport Motors, Ian gives Sally demeaning tasks in order to get
her to leave. He sends her on the sandwich run, has her washing cars and
gives her his best suit to take to the dry cleaner. Sally brings
it back direct from the laundry, crumpled to bits and shrunken, but at least
it were clean. Ian threatens to tell Kevin about their affair but
when he finds Kevin at home he can't bring himself to do it, yet. He tells
him instead that he'll no longer be putting any garage work his way, a huge
financial blow for the Websters. Ian and Sally call a truce, for now,
and Sally agrees to a move to another garage to work for one of Ian's mates
in the trade.
Writer Mel Hutchwright blags his way around the street, getting a free
lunch in the cafe after sweet talking Roy into becoming a researcher on
his new book. "Plenty of gravy, Royston" says Mel as Roy gets him
the lunch, "I lurve gravy". Then to the Rovers where Fred
buys Mel a pint after he promises to put Fred into his new book as the hero
of the hour, the sturdy coalminer who saves his fellow pit workers from certain
death. When Norris finds out the hero isn't to be him, he's devestated until
Mel tells him the character of Mr Cole in his book is the union chief,
an indefatiguable leader of men. Norris is straight to the bar for
another pint for Mel.
After Penny King's home is broken into, Mike asks her to move in with
him at the flat. "I'd like you to be the last woman in my life" he
tells her.
If you cast your mind back to the last time the Weatherfield Trader's
Assoication got a mention in the updates, there was a chap called Diggory
Compton the baker who made an impression. Well, it turns out that Sally's
old hardware store is to be a baker's shop and this heralds the return of
the rotund, bespectacled, square dealer to the street. Fred and Roy
aren't too happy that Diggory's setting up shop and fear loss of trade in
pork pies and sandwiches.
And finally this week, the flat above the corner shop sprung a leak so
serious that the ceiling of the shop came down on Fred's head. It's
bad workmanship from Charlie that's caused it but he refuses to acknowledge
this when Sunita goes to ask for his help. When she returns with
Dev, Charlie's still refusing to accept the blame even though it's clearly
his fault and he lashes out at Dev in the Rovers.
And that's just about that for this week.
Glenda
Here we go again with another weekly update coming at you through
this interconnected surfer dude net thing. I won't be here next week
so I'm leaving the update in the safe and kindly hands of Richard Whitbread
and I've told him to be gentle with you all. But now, without any further
ado, here we go with this week's Coronation Street update.
Betty, eh? She's seen fellas get their feet under the table in the
back room of the Rovers and she's seen them creep out at two in the morning
with their shoes on the wrong feet and their pants on back to front. She's
certainly seen enough to know that Charlie's a bad 'un after he lashed out
at Dev last week, but when she warns Shelley, again, she's told to keep quiet
and do the job that she's paid for. When Charlie gets thumped
by an enraged husband from Brunshaw Road, he tells everyone he's been beaten
by Dev, only Jason knows the truth and he's scared to speak out incase he
loses his job. When the Alahan's walk into the Rovers for a drink
Shelley ends up slapping Sunita after Sunita points out what a loser she's
become since she got involved with Charlie, believing his lies. As
the women fight at the front of the bar, Betty stands at the back, arms
crossed under her ample bosom, wearing a look on her face that says she's
seen it all before.
Kev finds out about Sally and Ian's affair when he goes to the garage
to find out why Sally's been sacked. Ian tells him the truth but Kev
decides to ignore it and believe Sally's lies. Even Rosie lies to Kev
and says her mum didn't have an affair with Gemma's dad, just to keep her
parents from splitting up again. So Kevin really knows the truth but wife
and daughter are doing their best to do his head in with lies. Rosie's
got problems of her own when Craig dumps her for getting on his nerves before
flinging the final insult: "You're not even a proper goth!". There's
a bit of a to-do in the corner shop when Sally tells Rita to stop sticking
her nose in where it's not wanted when she asks Sally if everything's alright.
All the old stuff is dragged up from the past and Sally accuses Rita of
only wanting to get involved in her family life when she's lonely or ill
or has a spare page left in the back of her cheque book and doesn't know
who to spend the cash on this time. They make up eventually but Sally can't
bring herself to tell Rita the truth about her affair with Ian. And
even when Justine storms round to talk to Sally, Kevin defends his adulterous
missus. Oooh, it's a veritable maelstrom of baked beans and big fibs.
Diggory the master baker makes his presence felt on the cobbles by tempting,
nay, kidnapping customers from the Rovers, the corner shop and the cafe to
taste his freshly baked products instead of the usual items they buy.
Mind you, nothing Diggory could offer would make me turn my nose up at a
Tunnocks Snowball (www.tunnocks.co.uk). Yum. (And any Brookside fans
reading this might remember Diggory Compton as the Wrexham fan).
Sadly, this week marked the passing of a much loved Coronation Street
character when Barney the rabbit died. Yes, a moment's silence is due. Next
door neighbour Keith is blamed as he never liked the thing anyway and he'd
already punctured David's football with his garden fork so was clearly capable
of doing the deed, or so David thinks. So when Barney's corpse disappears,
everyone at the Platts is a little bit worried and then rather disturbed
when Keith turns up with Barney stuck to a piece of wood, stuffed and mounted.
David doesn't know quite what to say, indeed everyone's quite lost for words.
Especially Barney.
Mel continues to cut a swathe through the street and Norris is still in
thrall, in fact he's sycophantic, bordering on hagiographic and that's not
something I say every day. In fact I never say it at all. A porcelain figurine
goes missing at Emily's and Mel asks if it was valuable. Emily replies it
was worth two hundred pounds. "It was not!" he retorts, then "Really?".
Clearly he's flogged it on the market as he's completely skint and cons
Audrey out of a big lunch at The Clock. Audrey's all of a flutter
with the attention although Ken's less amused with Mel laughing at his column
in the Gazette. "Ah, the angry young working class man" says Mel of Ken.
"It's not so much Look Back in Anger but look back in a very bad mood and
a cardigan". Actually he didn't say the last bit about the cardi but
I thought he should have done and was half expecting him to. As Norris
does the dusting, he's content to hear the tap tap tapping of the keyboard
as Mel types away at his new novel in the front room. But when the
tapping stops and starts winding itself around the tape machine, he knows
there's something up. Mel isn't typing at all, it's all a con, although
he tells Norris he couldn't have told him the truth because of his sensitivity.
The truth is, Mel says, the publishers have refused his new novel and he's
thinking of self-publishing instead - the very last resort of a desperate
author. I know, I read all about it once in the back of Exchange &
Mart.
Jamie seeks out and finds his real mum, Carol, in a Birmingham pub and
they catch up on the last 14 years but he hasn't got the guts yet to tell
Danny he's seen her. Danny has other things on his mind when Leanne
gives him the come-on (then the turn-off, all in one episode, she's so fickle
that girl). And now that Adam's returned from his posh Scottish school this
week to live with Mike and Penny, Danny under instruction from Baldwin senior
to take him under his wing at the factory and give him a job.
And finally this week Hayley tells Fiz and Janice she's worried about
Roy surfing the net on an evening. He won't tell her what he's up
to and every time she goes near the computer he flicks on the screensaver.
Fiz and Janice tell her it's probably porn but as this is Roy we're talking
about, it's probably trains.
And that's just about that for this week. Richard Whitbread will
be here next week.
Glenda