Gail needs a circuit break. This week we got the rarest of soap opera plotlines, the "comedy heart attack". Gail was crippled with a life threatening ailment and the cast and crew did everything but slap their thighs in amusement. Stop it. This is Gail Potter-Tilsley-Platt-Hillman-Platt-McIntyre-LesDennis, icon of this parish, and she deserves better than singing about octopuses and pulling exasperated faces in a dressing gown. She deserves better than her ratty, whinging family insulting her and dumping their children on her. She deserves better than a mother guzzling all her grapes and talking about benign neglect. Gail should push them down the sinkhole, every single one of them, then quietly fill it in and get on with her life. If she turns up the volume on her playlist it should drown the screams until they run out of oxygen and die.
I've so far resisted the general dislike of smartarse Sam, mainly because he reminds me way too much of myself at that age, but his ability to know
everything is really testing my resolve. He correctly diagnosed Gail's heart attack this week, purely by looking at her; in next week's episodes he'll correctly guess there's dirt in the pumps at the Rovers by measuring the head on the bitter and build a perpetual motion machine in the Community Gardens that will solve Britain's energy crisis. He finally alerted his rowing father and uncle about Granny Gail's collapse and they rushed out to help, leading to another of those socially distant scenes of insanity that you'd think they'd have worked out how to film around after a whole year of restrictions. Gail clutched at her chest and clung to the garden fence and Nicky, David and Sarah-Lou all stood two metres away and watched. David even took a seat on the cobbles. Invite Helen Worth's husband in and put him in Nicky's jacket so he can hug her; have Sarah-Lou cuddle a wig on a stick. Something to make it look like they care.
Get it? Got it? Good! Daisy's latest shenanigans saw her try to deprive Sean of any work in the Rovers. For some reason, the rest of the staff were sad about this; personally I'd have poured myself a pint of Baileys in celebration. Through a convoluted scheme involving hot dog food, Kirk talking about nail files, and Gemma shouting a lot, they managed to get him his job back, but not before Jenny Bradley finally demonstrated the steel core every pub landlady needs. Her tenure as Queen of the Rovers has been undermined repeatedly, first by Johnny's criminal and sexual shenanigans, then by the pandemic clearing out all her customers. She's seemed a bit vulnerable and weak. However, now she's got 100% of the pub, Jenny discovered her inner Bet Gilroy, and delivered a blistering lecture to her staff that put them all in their place and reminded them who was boss. She also told Daisy to shove her 5% share up her backside into the bargain. More of this Jenny, please, and less of the weepy wreck. And when she eventually lets Johnny back in - come on, it's definitely happening, right? - I hope she makes it very clear that she is in charge, and he's basically only there to change the barrels.
Pour out a glass and relax. Alina and Tyrone's baby nonsense threaded its way through the week's events, setting off little explosions every time it was mentioned, causing damage every step of the way. As always, I am irritated by the complete lack of consideration given to a termination, as this couple of all of a couple of months decided they wanted to be bound together by a tiny British-Romanian baby. (I was also intrigued by Fiz's revelation that Tyrone had previously been scrupulous about contraception, raising the sad thought that it wasn't that he didn't want more children, he just didn't want them with
Fiz). To be frank, it's difficult to take anything they say in that hairdresser's flat seriously while they've got a six foot poster of them cosplaying Danny and Sandy looming down at them the whole time.
Fiz did the right thing on Friday and went out on the lash with Maria where they could talk about how awful men are and generally air their dirty laundry. It was a lovely scene, and one we could do with more of, where people just hash stuff out and reflect and try and cope with their traumas. It also contained some of those amusing moments where you're reminded what astonishing lives these people lead, like when Maria suggested Alina might like Tyrone's reliability "because she was trafficked". Incidentally, I've only just realised that Maria is now called
Maria Windass. Poor cow. She proudly declared that her and Gary were now solid and she trusted him completely. Somewhere, a bell tolled ominously.
Everybody out. James and the rest of the Bailey clan are back - even Aggie! Hurray! I wonder what this means. A lovely, heartwarming story of the family reuniting? Perhaps a dramatic storyline as Aggie deals with the mistrust Ed felt after learning of her dalliance with Ronnie? Oh no, hang on, it's James-centred so of course, it's all to do with GAYS. James has been in the show for two years and in all that time he's only had a couple of his own storylines. These were:
2019: Gay
and then:
2020: Still gay
Beyond that all he's done is loiter on the sidelines looking gormless or shocked, depending on the current issue the rest of the family are dealing with. Now it's time for his 2021 storyline, and it involved him finally outing himself at the world's most depressing press conference. There have been appeals from sobbing parents to find their missing children that have been filled with more spark and charm than Wethy County's naff backdrop in that depressing hotel set. James finally caved under the pressure of about four questions and outed himself as, yes, a GAY (although he pronounces it as GEH which is a bit distracting); everyone was fine with it and life moved on.
James's status as Britain's Only Professional Homosexual Footballer - I mean he's a professional footballer, not a professional homosexual; he's still very much an amateur at that level - was accepted by pretty much everyone instantly, with the whole street turning out to watch him snog and Tyrone reporting that the fan sites were 80/20 in favour. We never actually heard from the 20% though, which is weird. Yes, there was mention of a single offensive Tweet, before he came out properly, but that was it. I'm not saying that Chesney should've spat on him in the Street or Kevin should've shouted "backs to the walls" as he passed, but in the real world there are no out professional footballers in the UK. There are two explanations for this - either gays can't play football, or there are massive societal pressures on them to remain closeted, and that sounds like something that would be interesting to explore. How about the club
weren't blindly supportive of James, and asked him to withdraw his statement because the sponsors didn't like it? How about we got Steve and Tim idly speculating what it must be like to have a gay man in among all the naked team mates in the showers after the match? How about Evelyn saying she didn't
mind what he got up to behind closed doors, but she didn't see why he had to make such a song and dance about it, couldn't he just get on with things without having to shove it in everybody's faces? A little bit of homophobia to demonstrate why James would've struggled to be public about all this, because to be honest, everything was so sunshine and roses it was difficult to see why he made such a fuss. Even Ed's perfectly fine with James having Danny over for a night of hot sex under his roof, telling him to come by any time. Danny is a chef now, by the way, and it seems there's a vacancy at the bistro. What are the odds, eh?
Break out the prosecco. They still won't let Jane Danson take any time off, as even though the whole Harvey storyline was finished, the producers promptly forced her into the studios to celebrate Leanne's birthday. Do you think everyone in the show is on a zero hours contract, and they turn up at the studio gates to see if there's any work in the morning, and Jane is just always there first? It would explain why characters vanish for months at a time - they arrive that little bit too late. Anyway, Leanne turned 40 on Friday, and she bravely pushed through being incredibly miserable to celebrate it a little bit. Toyah turned up with her gifts and I was reminded how resolutely middle-class these two formerly scrappy ratbags are now. Their days of prostituting, shoplifting and general hellraising are well behind them; imagine going back to 1998 Leanne and telling her that her birthday present from her sister was some candles and an artisan chocolate experience. She'd have flatly rejected them in favour of a bottle of Mad Dog 20/20 and a packet of Superkings. I know there's no chance of Les ever returning to the show, but wouldn't it be interesting to have him return and see his daughters in their world of floral prints and pale wood and understated elegance? He'd spill Carling down their overstuffed sofa, make a borderline racist remark about Imran, and have to be taken away by the police while the girls hid in the bedroom until he was gone. The Battersbys can still fight with the best of them but the difference is when they whack you over the head with their handbag these days, it's from John Lewis.
Sadly I didn't have time to go into the sale of Underworld to Carla, mainly because I don't have a PhD in Applied Mathematics and therefore can't deduce who owns what at that factory and in what percentage. I am currently working on it though, so follow me on Twitter @merseytart for when I publish the full Excel spreadsheet.
