Susur Lee’s first less than favourable review? Mistaking the colour and fabric of the local constabulary’s black polyester uniforms for blue serge? Calling the Red Hot Chili Peppers geriatric?
No, the one article I’ve written over the years that’s received the most negative response from NOW readers was the one in which I revealed an imminent plot twist on Coronation Street. How dare I ruin one of life’s small pleasures, both whined?
Au contraire, mes freres. I have been a devoted follower of the venerable British soap since what seems like WWII. Watching the Street week after week is like sinking into a warm bath of nostalgia. There’s nothing I’d rather do than have a cuppa and a biscuit while listening to a right old natter.
An admitted Anglophile, I read a lot of print and online British newspaper and magazines, so it’s hard not to stumble across Coronation Street spoilers. There’s even an excellent update site run by the acerbic Glenda Young. Since the episodes the CBC now runs in prime time are about seven or eight months behind those broadcast in Britain, these spoilers make the show even more enjoyable. Knowing months in advance that dim-bulb hairdresser Maxine Peacock was going to be the next victim of devious serial killer Richard Hillman only doubled the fun.
It used to be that no one ever died on Coronation Street. Pre-ratings booster Hillman’s murderous antics, characters weren’t killed off like the way factory boss Mike Baldwin made his recent King Lear exit. So beloved by the public, they’d go visit a sister in Cornwall instead.
Here’s the latest Corrie star to make an unceremonious exit. Nice guy Lloyd Mullaney – Steve MacDonald’s partner in Streetcars and ex-boyfriend of wrongly convicted purse snatcher Kelly – is about to mysteriously leave the show this week without any explanation whatsoever. One moment, he’ll be arguing with Steve in the Rovers, the next he’s gone. Six months from now, he will suddenly reappear as if nothing ever happened to ironically save someone’s life when a certain local café burns to the ground.
Where’d he go? Alien abduction? Seems that actor Craig Charles – who plays Corrie’s Lloyd and also played Dave Lister in 80s sci-fi cult TV hit Red Dwarf – was caught on camera by a UK tabloid allegedly smoking crack and was subsequently suspended from the Street last June.
And, I say, I say, Lloyd’s not the only one about to meet an untimely demise. Which lovelorn and verbose butcher on his way to walking down the aisle at last, at last I say, pops his clogs in the arms of a former Lady Mayoress (and we don’t mean Betty Turpin)?
But here’s an even bigger Corrie spoiler: Known as the barking-mad bitch of the cobbles, which bad mother is about to off her philandering control-freak boyfriend because she finds him, “really annoying, like”? And wait till busy-body Blanche finds out!
Letters to the usual address.
