Five Things We Learned In Corrie This Week

Pick a Barlow, any Barlow.  In the back room at MediaCity, there's a huge wheel with all the characters' names on it.  When the writers are short of a plotline or two, they nip in the back and spin the wheel, and voila!  An unlikely sexual coupling is created.  This is why Bet Gilroy once slept with Don Brennan, how the Kevin Webster-Molly Dobbs affair was conceived, and why Carla and Adam leapt into bed together this week.  It's purely down to chance; if the wheel had spun a little further Carla would've woken up next to Peanut the dog.  Unsurprisingly Carla and Adam immediately regretted their encounter, which doesn't speak well for either of their techniques, and they spent Friday hiding in dark corners and telling one another to keep their mouth shut.  Here's a hint - if you regret a one night stand and don't want it to happen again, then never mention it and don't do it again and that'll be it.  

Of course, this being a soap opera, the secret lasted about eighteen minutes, thanks to Carla leaving her phone behind in the back room which meant Peter got a phone call telling him her paramour had left their wallet behind.  Can I recommend everyone on the Street invests in some kind of tracker for their vital items?  Nobody seems able to leave the room without forgetting something.  I don't know how they manage it - everyone I know has their phone surgically attached to the palm of their hand.  Carla immediately confessed to her transgression and was full of apologies, though if my partner had been quite as vile as Peter had been the day before I'd have been a lot less considerate for his feelings.  He as good as called her a barren shrew and blamed the late lamented Tina for forcing herself on him and making him sleep with her on his wedding day; if Peter had said all that to me his testicles would've been in a jam jar on the mantlepiece.  She offered to move out, even though the Rovers belongs to her Dad so there was no need, but Peter agreed to put it all behind them.  Then immediately didn't put it all behind them.

Call Officer Dibble.  Craig continues to be the worst policeman on earth, and I'm not just talking about his heinous crime of not knowing who Jessica Fletcher is.  He nipped round to Ray's to give him a security evaluation, where we learned that CCTV only works 50% of the time; he didn't explain what would stop them from working but I'm guessing it's "when it's convenient for the plot".  In the process he got a glimpse of Ray's plans for Coronation Street and I'm going to need you to take a deep breath before you scroll down to the picture.

That is truly hideous.  It's like an Alicante hotel somehow tore off its moorings in 1968 and ended up crashing into 21st Century inner city Manchester.  There's so much to pick through there - the terrible brown cladding!  The lumpy annexes!  The pathetic square of green! - but the main thing, of course, is: who the hell would want to stay in a hotel that's surrounded by mangy terraces?  Imagine wandering to the window of your honeymoon suite and getting an eyeful of Eileen opening her curtains in her nightie.  It's not like Coronation Street is on a main road or overlooking a marina or anything; people are going to have to go quite far out of their way to visit Ray's luxurious dwellings, and I'm not sure it's worth the effort.    

So does this mean Nuttall's Brewery has closed forever?  Because you'd have thought that would've merited a mention.  If it hasn't closed, does that mean Ray already owns it and is going to shut it down?  Or is he going to cause some incident - like with the sinkhole - to get his hands on it?  Once again the "secret plot" bit of all this is the part that fatally undermines it, because it raises more questions than it answers.  If Ray had said right up front, "I've bought the old brewery round the back and I'd like to build a - cough - luxurious development on it and your houses are in the way", that would've been far more interesting.  Suddenly Coronation Street and its residents would've been under threat.  It would have pitted the neighbours against one another - you can imagine Sally being intrigued by the offer, but Gail not wanting to go; the residents of the terrace being horrified by the prospect of this leviathan looming over them and urging the posh side not to give in; Jenny getting excited about a new stream of customers for the pub and upsetting Rita whose home will vanish underneath it.  You could have Geoff snap his hand off and break the united front, only to be told he won't get his money until everyone sells.  Ray reckons he's doing all this so he can get the properties cheap, but he paid the full asking price for Sally's house on the day it went on the market so he's not saving much.  Instead of all that drama and a feeling of this little Street as a proper community we get Ray and Debbie hiding in the back room and cackling maniacally.

Still, Craig continues to sniff around, even though I'm pretty sure no crime has been committed.  He did take up Ray's offer of a romantic meal at the Bistro, though he paid for it himself to avoid accusations of bribery - here's a hint, Craigy, if you're paying for the date yourself, why not take Faye somewhere she doesn't already work?  The poor girl even ended up behind the bar at one point.  Ray has now threatened him with the Chief Inspector destroying his career.  I doubt that'll worry him.  Craig has a catalogue of blunders and indiscretions behind him, and if that's not wrecked his job prospects, nothing will.

Home is where the heart is.  Billy wrestled with his conscience over that nice Archdeacon house (Archdeaconry?).  He wasn't sure he could live in a plush grace and favour home when there are people living rough and decided to stay in the flat above the florists.  Which is very decent of him and all but unless he's planning on turning the Archdeacon house (Archdeaconmanse?) into a homeless shelter what he's actually doing is leaving one perfectly good home empty while occupying a smaller property that someone low on the property ladder would snatch up.  Paul was understandably upset about not getting an en-suite and after a load of beer and goading from Todd he dressed up in Billy's vestments and took the mickey.

Billy demanded he take them off, but once again this was largely a subterfuge and part of their rampant love life, as he decided Paul looked better in them than he did.  Summer's return is really going to put a crimp on their sex life; they should've gone to that big house so at least they could stick her in a wing of her own and she wouldn't accidentally walk in on them wearing nothing but nipple clamps and a puppy mask.  

So yes, Summer's back, and she's got a new head; the moment when she recognised Todd, who also has a new head, was hilarious to me.  Perhaps they're the Summer and Todd from an alternate universe and they've swapped with their Earth One equivalents.  She was rightly narked with Todd for belting a policeman then running off into a forest and leaving her, but Paul smoothed things over because he is an angel, which probably means he's going to sleep with Todd as well.  Maybe they should just form a throuple, a human centipede of gays taking care of Summer, and then they can put all these petty revenge plots and glowering side eyes to bed.

Learn from the best.  When I'm not watching three hours a week of Coronation Street, I'm watching five hours a week of Classic Coronation Street on ITV3, because I have literally nothing else going on in my life.  It seems the writers have been doing the same because they seem to have taken inspiration from the story earlier this year of Derek and Norris getting caught up in a pyramid scheme; they've changed the names and replaced "Envirosphere" with "Cachet make-up" but it's pretty much the same.  Hopefully they don't carry on this path and the big new storyline for 2021 is Sean's missing gnome because it was bad enough the first time round.  Michael went door to door - always wise in a pandemic - trying to flog £35 bottles of lipliner to harried mums of five; unsurprisingly, he didn't do well, but I do like his little tray.  It gives him a look of a cinema usherette.

Sean went for the more sophisticated route and organised a make-up party in Speed Daal with free prosecco and nibbles.  He still hasn't paid Eileen her rent, by the way; at this rate he'll be back living under a railway viaduct, trading £80 tubs of face cream for a cup of tea and a sandwich.  The main thing that happened at this night out was Tyrone got made over.

He then immediately told Fiz to fill a bag with as much product as she liked, plus some for the girls.  Yeah, alright Ty, we all know why you really want a metric tonne of make-up at home.  He's seen himself with a bit of lippy and been entranced and this is the start of his glittering drag career.  This time next year he'll be on a stage in the New Union on Canal Street lip syncing to Sophie Ellis-Bextor and calling himself Désirée Dobbs.

Pack away your memories.  Sweet little Emma wanted to do something to remember Oliver and she remembered reading about a memory box.  In it you put pictures, locks of hair, handprints, all stuff to keep the memory of the departed close.  It all sounded lovely but I couldn't help imagining Leanne nipping out for a cup of tea and returning to his hospital room to find Emma pouring plaster of paris all over the shop to get a cast.  Being under heavy sedation is bad enough without your half-sister trying to make a death mask at the same time.  She told Steve about it, and he thought it was a lovely idea; unsurprising, since he did exactly this when Ruairi died three years ago.  It occurred to me this week that when Michelle lost Ruairi, the pain was made even worse because she discovered Steve had a spare child in the form of Oliver.  Now Oliver's dying, and the pain is even worse for Leanne because she discovered Nicky has a spare child in the form of Sam.  This seems to be a repeating pattern, and means that Sam is going to die horribly in 2023, and Natasha is going to discover that her boyfriend at the time (I don't know, Ryan) has fathered another child.  History is cyclical, particularly in a soap opera that has to come up with enough storylines for 300 episodes a year.

The author has chosen not to dwell on Peter's descent into alcoholism because he is off to enjoy a bottle of wine in front of Strictly.  Please send details of AA groups to him on Twitter @merseytart - but not until tomorrow.

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