Coronation Street Weekly Update, week ending Sept. 17

Here's Janet with the Weekly Update while our Flaming Nora is on her hols.

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Hello again!

I saw an article on the BBC Breakfast show this week about a man who’d grown a marrow as big as a five year old child. It’s just as well that he was in Nottingham and not Weatherfield otherwise Deirdre would have surely snapped it up. Yes, this week saw the return of the infamous Baked Stuffed Marrow that fed almost all the Barlow clan and various hangers-on. “Such a super evening” she sighed happily.

She wasn’t put off by the nauseous cooing between Tracey and Ryan, didn’t notice the fact that Steve was playing with his food as opposed to eating it and didn’t care that Ken upstairs wasn’t tempted by (purchased) Sticky Toffee Pudding, the Marrons Glacé that Blanche won in a raffle nor indeed the aroma of toast she wafted in his general direction. Deirdre was in the throes of passion as she waxed lyrical about Samir, the young Moroccan waiter she married in the mid-nineties, killed in as yet unsolved mugging. He was the love of her life who yet lives on in the form of Tracey’s donated kidney. Plus if we ever needed further proof that drugs affect your sense of judgement, Ryan actually liked the marrow. “Great” he called it. There, I’ve said it, enough about marrows! And it was enough for Steve and Michelle as well as they escaped before Deirdre could break out the Jenga (other board games are available for your family fun).

Speaking of Michelle, an eagle-eyed reader spotted an error in last week’s update: it was of course Tina who pushed Kirsty in the Rovers.

Things haven’t improved for Tina and Tommy. Baby Dobbs is back home, complete with bright pink ribbon round her head. Her parents haven’t agreed on a name yet: Mum wants to call her either Sadie or Harper, which Dad says sounds like something you’d use to clean a loo.

She’s a cute little thing, about a tenth of the size of the giant teddy bear that T’nT purchased to say “Sorry about causing you to deliver on a sofa in the Rover’s Back Room so that Gloria and Marcus could gawp up your nether regions”. Kirsty wasn’t in a forgiving mood. It's a move supported by both Maria who came round to cuddle the baby and Jason, who takes the opportunity to remind them that moving day will shortly be upon so they’d better get their skates on and find a new home.

As far as I’m concerned, spending your 18th birthday at a fertility clinic followed by half a lager in the Rovers just doesn’t set the right tone for your adult life to come. Many young girls would have snapped up Gloria’s offer of a drink adorned with a brightly coloured umbrella but Katie’s already weary before her time.

The fertility clinic advisor keeps stressing the emotional impact that surrogacy and handing over the baby would have on Katie. In Gary’s rose-tinted world, nothing can go wrong but you can see that Izzy’s considering exactly what her little sister would be sacrificing. Finally, Chesney’s had enough and explodes at the celebrations when Gary tried to monitor Katie's drinks.

Dadzilla goes from sulking on the stairs to storming out with a “Are you really going to take [fatherhood] from me?” when Izzy makes the decision to remove Katie from the burden surrogacy would place on her. It’s followed quickly by releasing Gary to spawn with another. However, true lurve survives and they’re back together by the end of the episode.

Gloria’s been making herself right at home, swiping the last of Stella’s expensive perfume and binning Betty’s hotpot. Sacrilege! Gloria’s offered her daughter a Spa Day to get her off the premises albeit one that comes with a sting in the tail. She advises Stella to “See if they can do summat with your hair while they’re at it!”

Gloria sneaks off to sweet talk Karl into doing a few hours in the Rovers. All the spa treatments in the world wouldn’t have been enough to control her blood pressure when Stella spots her ex hauling a few crates. There’s clever use of background music with Abba’s “Waterloo” playing on the jukebox and as Stella gets so fed up that she turfs Gloria out, it’s Chicago with “Hard to Say I’m Sorry”.

Gloria drags her cases down to the end of the street where she sweet talks Leanne and Nick into providing a room for the night. And a night is all it takes for Leanne to beg her mother to take her back. She’s helping out in the bookies by choosing a 20-1 winner for Lloyd though poor Kirkeh’s nag came last ... the story of his life. I’d like to see something good happen to Kirkeh, wouldn’t you?

We can add Gail to the list of Ladies Insulted by Gloria who questions her bottoming techniques (aka northern for cleaning) and snatches the Bistro keys out of Gail’s fingers to open up. After all, she’s not the public, you know, she’s family and she’s dead enthusiastic to get in and get the restaurant into the pristine condition it’s so far been lacking!

I’m looking forward to seeing which Big Boy turns his eagle eye on Beth when she places her lonely hearts ad on t’internet. Let’s hope he’s a better catch than Gloria’s Clifford, whom she described as a grizzled Rock Hudson, a gangster on the “right bus”. When Clifford does show up, he looks more like an aged Les Dennis! Considering Les will be 59 in a couple of weeks, that’s no spring chicken! Almost elfin, one could call Clifford, hardly the he-man hewn of granite I had been expecting.

It turns out that Gloria never ran a bar in the “Costas”, it was actually a dry cleaners and she ran off when she burned it down, accidentally like, not that she was the arsonist some people accused her of being. Unfortunately he chooses Gail as his confidante. It’s amazing what a man with only Euros in his pocket will tell a woman who’s bought him a bacon barm at Roy’s. “You’re a sham!” she hisses at Gloria “and I’m going to take great pleasure in telling everybody else!” Gloria begs her to reconsider, which Gail does ... for a price. She’ll have to move out of Nick and Leanne’s flat and plead for mercy from Stella. Gloria and Gail lay it on a bit thick and the former’s back in the Rovers in double quick time (couldn’t quite catch the song in the background but you know it would have worked). Looks like these two are going to be as thick as thieves in the future!

Owen rips his hand on a nail and is tended to by Nurse Tina who also recommends that he check out t’internet to gather options for Izzy and Gary. Owen offers to pay all the costs and when Tina discovers potential amounts surrogates make on expenses, her jaw dropped and she jokingly exclaimed “Maybe I should have the baby!” She then considers that the cash could clear her and Tommy’s debts plus have a little extra over. Had this happened in the pub, I fully expect that Paul Anka would have been warbling “You’re Having My Baby” in the background. Owen wonders how serious Tina is and they start to negotiate. He starts at £5k, she counters with £30,000 and they shake on £15 thousand.

The initial reaction from assorted Windasses and Armstrongs doesn’t quite go according to plan. They’re less than keen but they’re also overheard by Faye who promptly proceeds to fill Tommy in before Tina had any opportunity. Tommy’s about as keen as Ches had been though the latter never accused Katie of selling her body for profit. He stomps up the street (not so easy on crutches) to tell Izzy and Gary it’s wrong and he’s not going to let it happen. The only baby he wants Tina carrying is his and he can’t accept any other decision.

Kirkeh seems to have quite a soft spot for Beth. He drives her to her to meet Dave, her blind date. Kirkeh tells she looks dead classy though there’s more than a touch of Cilla Battersby Brown about her tonight.

They’ve not got a lot in common, Beth and Dave, who seems to have used a photo about 20 years old in his response. He likes martial arts, mucky films and offers Beth a roll around on a nice sheepskin rug that’s not real but looks it. She kindly declines his offer by pouring the remains of her bitter over his head. Dave comes chasing after her, threatening all sorts. In the nick of time, sweet, adoring Kirkeh pulls up to the rescue and takes a blow for her. There’s nothing quite like a knight in shining armour to make you think twice about a bloke!

And it looks like there’s a new lady in Lloyd’s life when he meets up with an old love at a reunion of the Oldham Funk Outfit. Her name’s Mandy and I like her a lot but she’s suspiciously evasive when he wants to see her again. Heavy hints are revealed when it turns out they had a fling when she was married to the now deceased Johnny.

In closing, Tyrone and Kirsty have finally come up with a new name for their tyke: Ruby. It’s a nice enough moniker in itself but is yet another addition to that long list of “ee” ending female names on the street. Sometimes there’s houseloads of them (Deirdre / Tracey / Amy; Sally / Sophie / Rosie), sometimes they are strong characters who can stand alone (from originals Annie Walker and Elsie Tanner through to the sorely missed Betty Williams and the current crop of Emily Bishop, lovely Hayley Cropper, Mary the mad woman), well you get the picture. So, let’s have a change to the naming convention. Janet’s already been used for the second Mrs Barlow, the homewrecker who schemed after Rita’s Len and Elsie’s Alan Howard before setting her sights on Ken. She then refused to allow his twins to return from Scotland before finally committing suicide in the marital bed. Charming.

There’s an alternate options of “a” ending names (don’t worry, I’m not going to list them all!) so I think the perfect next female name should be Glenda.

I say we start a campaign to usher in Glenda as the next baby girl. No, wait – at the moment that looks likely to be Glenda Windass and that just wouldn’t do!

I say we start a campaign to usher in Glenda as the name of the next strong female character. Who’s with me?? Let me hear you say “Aye”!

And on that bombshell, I return you to regular service with our very own Glenda who’s full of the joys of ... ermm ... autumn these days and thank you for having me.


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