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“The Idiot!” are the first two words out of Ken Barlow’s mouth when he moves into the retirement community of Stillwaters with Claudia. Is he referring to himself, we wonder, for allowing Claudia to railroad him into the retirement home after Audrey tries to convince Ken to stay on the cobbles. But it’s a book Ken spots on the bookshelves in the lounge of his new home, The Idiot by Dostoevsky, one of Ken’s favourites, in a translation he’s never read before. He immediately feels better about leaving his old life behind and Claudia’s fired up to find out there are regular trips to a local wine bar with the Stillwaters ladies who lunch. But before Ken left No. 1 Coronation Street, he packed up his boxes, reluctantly. It was a sad scene, poignant, for all of us fans who’ve got used to Ken living at No. 1 even though he’s not lived there all of his life. Ken stood alone in the empty house. His books had gone from the shelves, the photographs of him and Deirdre taken down. You could almost hear Deirdre in the background. “Oh, Ken!”. Ken heads out of his old life and into his new carrying Deirdre’s home-made pottery peanut bowls in his hands. Claudia might be his new partner, but Ken’s nuts are still with Deirdre as he starts his new life. But fear not, he hasn’t left the show and we’ll see him again next week.

Elsewhere this week Aggie Bailey wins the Weatherfield Golden Heart award and there’s a bit of a do where she’s presented with her award. Son James is there and a Weatherfield Gazette reporter comes up to him to ask if the rumours of him being gay that are circulating on social media are true. James is shocked but denies the truth. He’s called to a meeting with his football manager and the team’s press office but still denies he's gay. The manager tells James he needs time to calm down after the social media rumours and drops James from his next game.

More lovely scenes this week in Roy’s Rolls between Nina, Carla and Roy. I love this little family. Nina is as batty about bats as Roy and he invites her to join the Weatherfield Bat Society. There’s a meeting in the café where fellow bat spotters Herman, Farouk, Dave and Brian meet Nina. Roy and Brian are supportive of Nina but the others dismiss her because of her goth clothes. Roy defends Nina to the hilt and says that Hayley would have done the same.

Dr Ali leaves this week after Gary pays gangster Sharon to spike Ali’s drink in the Rovers. Ali’s rushed to hospital where he denies taking drugs but Dr Gadass sacks him anyway because blood test results don’t lie and she thinks Ali is even though he’s not. Gary and Ali fight in the street over Maria and to cut a long and rather tedious story short, Ali hugs Ryan, hops into his car and leaves the Street with very bad hair. And now that Ali’s gone, it has me wondering what the point of Ryan is now that Ali, Michelle and Robert have all left too?

Over at Speed Daal, Alya gets suspicious of Geoff when she finds he’s been swindling money from the restaurant. Yasmeen won’t hear a bad word said against Geoff, of course, but you can tell that some of Alya’s words are finding their target with Yasmeen and hitting the spot. Let’s hope it won’t be too long before the horrible Geoff is carted off to the cop shop. Meanwhile, Geoff knows that Alya’s on to him and tells Yasmeen he wants them to move away from the cobbles to Cyprus.

And that’s just about that for this week.

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This week’s writers were Mark Wadlow and Julie Jones (Monday); Jayne Hollinson and Joe Turner (Wednesday); Ella Greenhill and Ian Kershaw (Friday). Find out all about the Coronation Street writing team at Coronation Street Blog: Exclusive: All Current Corrie writers online

Glenda Young

Author of gritty, family sagas with Headline