Smooth Operator

Dev Alahan, Smooth Operator.

That's the Dev Alahan that we met when he first showed up on Coronation Street, having purchased his uncle Ravi's seven shops. He had a slick line for the ladies and wasted no time schmoozing with barmaid Gina Gregory but more often than not, Dev's affairs ended up disastrously. In this post, inspired by one that was published in the Manchester Evening News, we look at some of Dev's dubious past loves.

Gina Gregory wasn't Dev's first disaster. While he was attempting to woo her, his former girlfriend from Birmingham, Amy Goskirke, showed up. She told everyone Dev was a love rat and nearly had everyone convinced of it until he exposed her apparent suicide attempt as a sham (no scars under the bandaged wrists). She was made out to be more of a disturbed stalker than a dumped girlfriend but I always wonder if he hadn't led her on.

 

Gina nearly married Dev but he had a one night stand at Christmas with his shop assistant, Deirdre, and when Gina found out, that was Dev dumped. After Gina left the building, Dev had an affair with Tracy Barlow, making a set of the Barlow women.  That ended badly, with Tracy destroying all his clothing.

Tracy might have been the first nutter Dev was involved with, but she wasn't the last and the next woman that made Dev's life hell was lawyer Maya Sharma. She was fun and exciting at first, but her outrageous side turned into a mad obsessive stalker. First she impersonated Sunita and married several men in an immigration scam, causing Sunita to be arrested on her wedding day. When that didn't split up Dev and Sunita, she burned down all this shops and kidnapped Dev and Sunita, trapping them in a burning shop. They were rescued just in time.

Ah yes, sweet Sunita, one of the shop assistants in one of his other shops. She was a good Indian girl and after a few ups and downs in that relationship, they got married. But it didn't last too long. After Maya made her unsuccessful attempts at splitting them up, Dev's own womanizing past caused the end of his marriage to Sunita. She discovered he had children by several other shop assistants, one of whom even had her own child. The betrayal was too much and Sunita left him for five years after giving birth to their twins.

Did Dev learn a lesson? Did he 'eck. He took up with the wife of a business associate *and* her daughter but after settling on the daughter, he had a fling with yet another woman so the daughter, Tara talked him into posing nude and plasted his photo all over the wall of a new building being erected.  Yer dumped!

Sunita came back into Dev's life and they reconciled. It was all happy families for awhile but Sunita became bored and had an affair with nasty Karl who was landlady Stella Price's fella. Dev was almost going to forgive her but he wasn't there yet and Sunita ended up dying after being caught in a fire at the Rovers that Karl set.

Dev's next attempt at love was to follow through on a crush he developed on Stella but it didn't get too far. They were far better at being friends.

As we have seen, Dev has well and truly shot his relationship with the lovely Julie Carp in the foot by foolishly persuing Talisa, a fellow charity worker he met in India. It was completely one sided but Julie realized that she loved him far more than he did her if it was that easy for him to fall for someone else.  Dev not only lost Talisa but Julie as well.

What's next for Dev? Sunita was probably the love of his life. Will he find true love again or will this aging playboy continue to lurch from one woman to the next, never quite getting it right?



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