Gemma is organising the chilli eating competition, which so far only involves Shona, Dev and Chesney. You can't make a ginger eat ghost chillis! That's a hate crime. "I struggle with a glacier mint," quoth Ches. Gemini invokes the spirit of Ron "Iron Guts" McGee, but Chesney loses the contest whilst Shona is victorious. I guess they did this kind of thing down at the Paul Robeson estate all the time. Paul is discombobulated by all the fuss and the pity and who can blame him, especially when he discovers Bernie putting crystals in the cupboard under the sink (where next? The toilet cistern?) and then she and Billy argue about their beliefs. "Lots of celebrities use crystals" Bernie retorts, both truthfully and meaninglessly.
Paul flounces off to the Chariot Square hotel where he starts spending some of the chilli money on pints and shots for himself and then Zack, an old boyfriend who is doing some plumbing in the hotel and is still resentful that Paul finished with him. Zack turns out to be a bit of rough trade as he spots Paul's cash and then invites him up to a hotel room where Zack pours out his mini-bar miniature into a plant pot (fortunately it won't kill the plant as it's plastic) and gets Paul drunk(er), then nicks the dough. It's not really a surprise that Paul passes out, as he must surely be on painkillers, which probably don't mix with day-drinking.
Talking of mystical woo-woo, Elaine invites Gerry the Tai Chi fella to Roy's with herself and Stephen where the bacon is the yin to the barm's yang (with some karma ketchup). Gerry obliviously fancies Elaine but she only has eyes for Mr Hole Punch who says to his fiancée that they should fix a date for the wedding. As ever, Stephen is multi-tasking, he also manages to persuade Gabrielle to pretend to be Seagull Ltd on a Zoom call with Carla so he can "prove" that they're a real business. Gab says what we've all been thinking: "All this connivance over a pittance", but Stephen says he has his eyes on the main prize just as Elaine walks into the flat. Oh, you rotter!
Over at the Rovers, they've remembered it's pub quiz day and Tyrone and Boring Stu are forced into a team with resident eggheads Yas and Roy (they should really do an episode with Roy and Yasmeen on a TV quiz show). Stu shows remarkable self-awareness in saying "I'm not that clever", then gets all whiny and jealous over Roy, but later apologises. Not sure what this is about unless to show that of Geoff's victims, one of them, Yasmeen, has moved on to a better, if boring, man, but Elaine has repeated the same mistake?
As an aside, the pub quiz has been going since Johnny and Jenny took over the Rovers, but Roy didn't know about the convention of buying the runners-up a drink or returning the plastic statuette?
And finally, at the rival establishment it's somehow busy for a Monday, Leanne is rushed off her feet serving the four tables, and Ryan offers to go back to work. Given that he's presumably on statutory sick pay, he'd have to go back eventually.
Rachel Stevenson - on twitter
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