I'm not sure what Richard and Janet have been doing in the update chair but I'll just spread a sheet of newspaper over it before I sit
down ...Now, where were we? Oh yes - Diggory is kneading his dough and making jokes about buns,  baps, big `uns, long `uns and hot boxes while Liz runs round like an  extra in a Benny Hill show. And in the caff Tracy is showing off the new Amys to Nathan in the
hopes of making Steve jealous. And Janice the Blackmailer is capitalising on her hold over Danny by  staying out to have an extra ciggy and pointing out to him that the  nicknames he gives the grrrlz are offensive and boring at the same  time. And she starts calling him Baldy. Gail discovers that Phil is still seeing Eileen (well, he could  hardly miss her, could he?) and tells him to sling his hook. So the chances of her becoming Gail Nail recede. Pity. But the Too Tall Toe Fiddler smashes the cassettes he made of Gail and Sarah talking  about life with a serial killer and it's all back on again. The grrrlz follow Lloyd to see if he is two-timing the one whose  name I can never remember. He is, unless there is some innocent  explanation for a bloke eating a woman's face. No, didn't think so. Violet and Jason come back drunk from a night clubbing and, contrary  to all the good advice she's had, Violet tells Jason she kissed  Charlie. He immediately finishes with her. And the next day tells  Charlie where to stick his job. And despite everyone speaking up for  Vi and telling Jason what a lovely girl she is, she stays dumped. Much sadness, pathos and bathos. Indeed, several of the Musketeers
put in an appearance. Danny gives Leanne the heave-ho and decides that releases him from  the blackmailing grip of the poison dwarf. So he docks her wages.  She complains "I'm short" and he tells her not to wear stripes. Danny and Lee decide to have one last night - to go out, would you  believe, with a bang. But Jamie proposes to Lee and she chooses to  go with him on a knicker delivery run to Holland, leaving Danny in  the lurch via a voicemail.

Meantime back at Streetcars, George has resigned. George? Who's  George? Anyone remember a George? No? Clearly invented just so he  could resign and Steve could recruit a new cabbie who turns out to  be the voluptuous Veronica aka Ronnie. Who confirms to her  prospective employer that she is flexible. And that night and day  are all the same to her. And it turns out Leanne has left her phone behind and, by a series  of unlikely coincidences, Roy believes it's Frankie's phone and Vera  takes it round to Frankie. In time for Frank to get a call from  Danny who thinks he's phoning Lee (keep up at the back) and dives in  with "You wanted it yesterday and you want it now." Which Frankie  takes amiss.

Incidentally, several of this week's episodes were directed by Rob  Rohrer. Who was at the same University as my wife. Imagine two young  undergraduates filled with ambition. And one ends up herding actors  round a draughty set in Manchester and the other ends up married to  me! I bet Rob is secretly a bitter man and has probably taken to  drink. While Mrs Dean wakes up singing. Isn't life strange?

Well, that's yer lot. Glenda will be back next week to tickle your  jaded palates.

Here I am back from me jollies with another weekly update. Many thanks to Richard, Janet and John for doing such a grand job with the updates while I was away and for keeping the weekly update office soft and lovely in my absence.   It was a wonderful holiday, truly lovely – well, how could it not be when that part of the world has custard tarts as the local delicacy?  And so, without any further ado,  here I go with this week's Coronation Street update.

Streetcars gets its own sweater girl (well, she makes Steve perspire) when Veronica "Ronnie" Clayton turns up with the sort of looks – and cleavage - you don't often see outside of a Hollywood B movie.  She gets the job as a new driver after Steve covers a couple of points at the interview in an episode of Carry on Corrie Cabbie.  When he surfaces for air, the future looks bright for Steve until Lloyd gets a visit from Ronnie's husband Jimmy, owner of rival firm Connect Cabs and general ne'er do well of the parish.  Jimmy tells Lloyd that if his good for nothing wife should turn up looking for a job (snarl, menace, grimace) he'd rather they didn't give her one. Too late, Steve already has, oh, at least once.  Ronnie tells Steve she's left husband Jimmy as he was beating her up and now she's living in a B&B and needs work.  Steve can't see why Lloyd's so uptight about recruiting the new driver but that's because he hasn't yet met  (grimace, snarl) Jimmy.

Danny starts off lying to Frankie about his affair with Leanne but comes clean soon enough when Frankie's not fooled.  All this stuff has been excellent, I almost shed a few tears during one of the episodes, the acting was superb and the dialogue excellent.  Anyway, Danny knows whatever he says won't change what's happened so he appeals to Frankie to give him another go.  "I am a man and I am stupid" he says, which seems to be the Corrie way for men on the cobbles.  Wanted – male actor to play stupid / feckless / wife-beating misogynist.  Except of course for the one they called the eco-warrier, now, he was different. But back to the Baldwins.  "It's in me genes babe, I carn't `elp it, luvaduck, birds come and they go but ah loves ya Frankie…" etc. and then I'm afraid I didn't catch the end of him pleading wiv her not to ruin all their lives by telling Jamie his dad was having it off with his girlfriend because I was playing with my new mobile phone.   Yes, I have become the sort of person I hate to sit next to on the train. 

Cilla needs a wedding frock and hasn't the cash to buy one but does have the balls to ask Shelley for hers.  And she gets it too as Shelley can't see the point of keeping it and is only too happy to give it away.  So now Cilla's got the frock, the fella and the Quo, the only thing left to sort out is the church. After a fruitless search, Bev puts Les onto a fella in the Weatherfield Arms, he's got a church of sorts although Bev admits it's more of a cult.  A cult, dear, keep up.  Father Abraham, for it is he, wears an "I heart Jesus" badge on the front of his jacket, has "The End of the World is Nigh" on the back, a red neon cross in the church and an action man with his kecks off.  "It's representational" he tells Cilla, who's trying to pick her face up off the floor when she sees the tin hut Les wants them to get married in.  A Battersby wedding indeed. Rock on.

Pigs might fly but they won't be able to jump over Gail's new garden fence.  Jason puts a new fence in her garden to keep the Good Life from encroaching over her side.   It's a sunny day, she's feeling relaxed so she sits in the garden with her feet in a foot spa that Phil the six-foot foot fella has given her as a gift.  As Gail drifts off to sleep with her toes twirling, Eileen pops by to see how Jason's doing.  Jealous of Gail's relationship with Phil and spying wet concrete that Jason's using, Eileen pours it in the foot  spa so that when Gail wakes up her feet have set hard into the mix. Oh how we laughed, almost.  Is Eileen really that evil?  A bit sad maybe, a bit dowdy, a woman perhaps who has lost her sparkle  -  but evil?

Martin's girlfriend - the one who's a football mascot not the one who's a schoolgirl, turns up at his flat looking sultry after they argue in the Rovers.  How DO women do sultry like that?  One hand on the hip, eyes lowered, yes, I understand the theory. In practice though, when you turn up at someone's front door, what do you do with your Sainsbury's bags of shopping, the stray dog that's followed you down the street, the stream of bus tickets stuck to your shoe?   She can't stay long, she tells him, she has to go home to do marking.  "How do PE teachers do marking?" we asked each other across the living room.  "How do PE teachers do marking?" Martin echoed on-screen.  Anyway, it's all a ploy to get Martin off with this woman, out of the Street and into gainful employment elsewhere. Next!

In episode number two of Carry on the Cobbles this week, Diggory lusts over Liz in the bakers shop.  There's too many baked goods double entendres I could use here so I won't even start, although they are all quite funny.  He gets her a bike and wants her out on the cobbles delivering his wares.  Liz quite rightly refuses, for now, and catches the eye of another customer who comes in for a cream horn and leaves with a tart (fnarr fnarr, oo-er missus etc., sorry, I know I said I wouldn't but I couldn't help myself.)  He's a young man, indeed much , much  younger than Liz but she's flattered to bits and goes on a hot date with toy -boy.

And that's just about that for this week.

Glenda

Here we go again with another basket full of words squeezing in with the scampi and chips on the dinner plate of life better known as the Coronation Street weekly update.

Liz and the toy-boy get acquainted with each other's underwear this week as the young fella-me-lad and Mrs McDonald fall deeply in lust.  "Hello sonny" says Steve when he bumps into Andy in the kitchen at breakfast, "shouldn't you be at school?"   When Liz surfaces for air she has lunch with Deirdre in the Rovers, the pair of them swapping notes on current love situations.  Liz reveals that Andy indulges in spanking while Deirdre says she doesn't mind Ken leaving his socks on when they do it, but she'd prefer him to take his cardigan off.  Anyway, Andy wants Liz to meet his mother and brings her into the Rovers.  She's Liz's stunt double - blonde and old, complete with skirt up to here and neckline down to there with not very much in-between.  Liz can't believe her eyes and tells Andy the lust rush is over.

Danny's ex-wife Carole turns up asking questions, demanding to know why Frankie's put the kybosh (I love that word) on Jamie marrying Leanne. A distraught Frankie ends up telling Carole the truth about Danny and Leanne and it all comes out in the wash on the cobbles.  Jamie's in bits: "I ain't got a father, you hear me? He's dead!"; Leanne leaves on a bus after a fight with Frankie in the caff "Tara!"; and Danny's beside himself with worry that he's lost his son as well as his wife "Cor blimey I'm fick". And what does Carole do?  She tells Danny she still loves him, wants him back and always has done.  She lays herself open to rejection and humiliation and Danny doesn't disappoint her, not one bit.

More family shenanigans at the Platts as Gail and Phil the Foot have dinner at The Clock.  He tells her about his calling to toes and reveals his road to Damascus ocurred while travelling on the M1 from London to Glasgow on an express coach.  Which means it only took 4 days instead of the usual 12.  Things look set to become rocky for Gail when David decides he doesn't want his mother meeting  Phil and deletes his messages from the phone before retreating upstairs to his room to play Joy Division, loudly.  The best, indeed only, way.

After his run in with Jez Quigley, you'd think Steve would've learned his lesson and stayed well clear of gangsters, but no, he's obviously on a steep learning curve and hasn't yet gone up the slope, he's still on the bit on the bottom that's either the x or y axis, I can never remember.  Jimmy Clayton's squaring up to be Jez Quigley v. 1.03, a bit like the original but with more power, better memory and a crazy frog screen saver.  Jimmy's already started a campaign of hate against Streetcars with hoax calls and vandalising the cabs. Eileen puts a call out to all drivers and a disparate group of non-speaking extras line the cab office to hear Lloyd lambast his partner for putting his love life with Jimmy's wife Ronnie (a woman who sounds like she's just eaten a decent cod supper) before his business. 

Keith's fattening up the piglet to sell off in bits, clearly marked on its body, for Christmas. Fred's a bit put out to be losing orders for Christmas ham, I say, he's not best pleased but Keith pays no heed. He buys another man pig and the pair of them rutle through the kitchen scraps in the garden as happy as two pigs in soap.

Ken's shocked when he catches Deirdre smoking in the backyard and demands she give up her 35 year addiction.  He even instructs Norris not to sell ciggies to Deirdre so Deirdre tells Ken he has to give up his 15 cups of coffee a day habit if she's giving up smoking.  Blanche should consider taking refuge under the kitchen table sooner rather than later.

Les still hasn't found a church for the wedding but as luck would have it, wouldn't you know, he takes a vicar for a ride in his cab and drops him off at a picturesque parish church in leafy Cheshire.  The vicar tells Les he needs 6 months notice for weddings and doesn't approve of divorced people getting wed there, which is a shame as the church is everything that Cilla wants her wedding church to be.  As Les wanders around while he waits for the vicar to get the taxi fare from the vestry, he finds out that the church is kept open all day for those who want to come in and pray, be alone and commune with their own personal Jesus. "Kept open all day, eh?" says Les, signposting himself into next week's episode already.

And that's just about that for this week.

Glenda

Greetings and welcome to another weekly update,  This week the update chugs along the tram-lines of cyberspace to the terminus of your inbox, trying to squash in for space with emails offering you things that'll extend this, firm up that, do the hokey-cokey and turn around.  And so, without any further ado, here we go with this week's Coronation Street update.

Deirdre tries to stay off the fags but Kenco Ken caves in and goes back on the coffee.  The two of them have been as ratty with each other in the way that only two people trying to give up life-long addictions can be. "When it comes to gay badinage you make your Uncle Albert look like Liberace" Blanche tells Ken - and with all his talk about 'working from home' just when did he give up being a trolley-dolley and why weren't we informed?

Cilla's preparing for the wedding next week by deep frying herself on the sunbed - always a good look on a bride, don't you think?  She sees red when Les tells her he's asked Kirk to be his best man when she'd planned for her grown-up son Billy to do the honours instead.  So Cilla sets Kirk tasks which he has to fulfil to prove his worth as best man.  Let the Labours of Kirkules commence!  First off is an easy one but he still makes a dog's dinner of stealing Schmeichel's squeaky plastic Maggie "out! out! out!" Thatcher toy until Molly assists.  The next task, however, could prove more tricky when he has has to unburden Blanche of her girdle.  Les promises Cilla the wedding of her dreams and tells her she'll be a princess for a day and a queen for the rest of her life.  And Les will remain a loser for ever.  Cilla's got her eye on a three-tier cake in the window of Diggory's cake shop and after Yana wheedles her way into Diggory's affection after hours, the cake somehow appears on Cilla's dinner table, no questions asked and no explanation given. 

Gail finds out David's been deleting Phil's messages from her mobile phone and does her best to make amends.  Phil comes round to dinner but as the wine he brings is a sharp, crisp white instead of a fruity,  lusty red, you know the evening's not going to end with sub-duvet shenanigans.  Gail falters at the first step en-route upstairs to her boudoir (aka the back bedroom) and tells Phil she's got cold feet.  Instead of offering to massage her toes for her, the two of them part ways when she tells him she's not ready to go any further.

However, the shoe's on t'other foot as far as Martin's concerned. The week starts off badly when Robyn tells Martin she wants nowt more to do wi'im.  Her brother's a PC and he's run a check on his PC which brought up all sorts of nasty little truths about Platt.  She could have saved herself  the trouble and used Google instead, type in "Martin Platt - Coronation Street" and it's all there, I promise.  But Martin explains all and the romance is back on but will it sustain her moving away now she's exchanged on a flat.  (I always want to know what people have exchanged a flat for.  A three piece suite? A weekend in Amsterdam?).  The question remaining now is whether Martin will follow his long haired lover to Liverpool.

It all kicked off at Underworld this week when the girls went on strike after Danny sacked Janice. Even Hayley's on picket duty with her workmates and their placards although I was disappointed not one of them said "Down with Knickers" which is what I would have put if I'd been out striking.  Scab Scally refuses to join them and goes into work where she's joined by a motley bunch of machinists shipped in by Danny, every one of them in a cardi and anorak and none of them able to stitch in a straight line.  When Mike returns from holiday and finds out what's gone on with Danny and Leanne it leads to him telling Danny the truth about him being his son.  "That's a blinder" says Danny before he does one of those one-nostril man sniffs, then throws the girls out of the factory, smashes the place up and rings his old mum for a bit of advice on the old dog and bone. 

Jimmy Clayton steps up his campaign of terror against Streetcars and shows just what a nasty piece of work he is when he's racist towards Lloyd and Kelly in the cab office. He also gets his son (Ronnie's step son) to threaten Claire and Josh although Ashley delivers him a couple of punches by the bushes when he finds out he's been frettening Clurr. He also hands in Claire's notice at Streetcars and Fred's in total agreement, I say, he prefers women to stay at home and do some stitching, bake loaves, do the washing, have babbies.  But Claire's not having it and she tells Steve she wants her job back.  Ronnie, a woman for whom the word 'glamour-puss' was coined, stood around sticking her chest out much of this week, again. Yes, I am taking notes and hope to reprt on my progress next week.   She and Steve seem to spend much time in his bedroom, possibly inspecting his wardrobe, who knows?  Could this woman be the new Elsie Tanner we've all been waiting for?

And finally this week, Rita showed her mettle when she grabbed Norris by the lapels and shook him, quite hard.  Well, he'd only gone and had the Kabin sign repainted to include both their names above the shop - with his name first. "But it's traditional to have partner's names in alphabetical order" he pleads, citing Marks and Spencer, but not, you'll have noticed, Laurel and Hardy or Peters and Lee.

And that's just about that for this week.

Glenda

Well, here we are again with another weekly update. This week the update has been buttoned to chin since October came in and will cast not a clout till May be out.  The update is wrapped up in a warm scarf and is wearing thermal pants, socks, balaclava and vest and is feeling quite snug. And so without any further ado here we go with this week's Coronation Street update.

The main story this week has been the bringing together of the Battersby and Brown clans in the weirdness that was a Weatherfield wedding.  Yes, Cilla and Les tied the knot this week, unlawfully of course, in a wedding that included a defrocked vicar, a sham ceremony, a fake cake, a locked church, stolen flowers, a Dracula DJ, drunk uncle Barry and Status Quo.  Cilla's hen night saw her dressed up in a naughty nurse outfit with Yana in the Rovers. "You're demeaning the angels of our health service" said a haughty Norris while Les' stag do took place at the Weatherfield Arms with his mates from Steetcars.  Cilla dragged a young man home from the pub on her hen night, thinking that Les wouldn't catch her at it, but he does.  Fortunately for Cilla, Les is too drunk to remember and the next day Cilla lies that the fella was her son Billy who really did turn up for the wedding to act as Best Man.  Kirk did his best in the Labours of Kirkules, even managing to capture one of Blanche's girdles in a task set by Cilla but failed to impress with tracking down a wild boar when he brought home Roy Cropper as exhibit A.  Back to Billy, who turned up for his ma's bash inexplicably wearing the uniform of Le French Foreign Legion.  Talking of the Legion, everyone headed there after the wedding for rock and roll with the Quo, who've eaten the buffet before the guests arrived and found themselves in an emergency hair situation.  Whether the two things were connected, I really can't say.  Candice stepped in as hairdresser to the stars even though she'd never heard of the band and repaired their flowing locks  back to air-guitar bouncing perfection.  Cilla's beside her with joy with all the presents they've received and fondles the white goods while Les is dedicating a special song to her on stage.  When Les catches up with the Quo backstage, he turns all rock and roll and decides to trash their room, even throwing the telly out of the window.  When Cilla catches him she batters him good and proper as Les has only gone and trashed all their presents.  But it all ends well when the Quo take to the stage with Les as honorary Quo-ster and the people of the parish party on.

Violet decides to have another bash at Jason but she's left it too late. At the wedding Jason and Sarah are there alone after Sarah leaves Scooter babysitting Bethany.  Jason and Sarah snog in secret and then sneak away early back to Eileen's as a distraught Violet floats around the reception in a bad mood and an awful frock looking for her boyfriend, who's playing under the bed covers with strumpet Sarah.

Elsewhere this week Danny goes to see his old mum darn in Larnden and tells her he knows that his dad ain't his dad, his uncle Mike is.  There's a spot of crying and much tugging at his mother's heartstrings as well as the loose threads on her sofa.  He even tries to get a bit of sympathy from Frankie too, but she's torn as to whether she should give him a shoulder to cry on or a boot up the jacksie.  Mike breaks the news to Adam that he's Danny's half brother and Frankie tells Jamie he's Mike's grandson and the news dawns on them all that they're not who they once thought they were.

At Underworld, the strike's called off when Janice goes back to work after Mike makes her an offer she'd be daft to refuse.  He gives her the choice of her P45 or a transistor radio if she goes back to work and brings the girls with her. She chooses the latter but Baldwin makes her go to the shop and buy batteries for it, the money for both to come out of her wages.

And finally this week, just what is Lloyd up to? Kelly's convinced he's up to no good and while we've only had a brief glimpse of him with another woman, albeit in what looked to me like a passionate clinch, I admit, I was rather hoping Lloyd wouldn't turn out to be a lothario.  But this week he gets a call on his mobile phone from someone called Tina-babe and he cancels a date with Kelly to see Tina-babe instead.

And that's just about that for this week.

Glenda