CHIP shop entrepreneur Ian Beale and Janine, a woman with morals as loose as her knicker elastic, have history.
The Soapland records show that he once paid her for sex while she was practising the oldest profession in the backstreets of Walford. Now the pair have been flung together again in EastEnders (BBC1) – and the result is a sex tape, followed by a confession tape, and followed, for all I know, by a Christmas number one.
Ian, temporarily separated from his long-suffering wife Jane, fell into Janine’s bed. All part of a plot by her and evil Archie to pay back the Mitchell clan. Now someone has bashed Archie on the bonce and Walford’s answer to the Watergate tapes – only dirtier – lead to Ian’s arrest for murder.
But I get ahead of myself.
Janine, never one to miss a business opportunity, demands £10,000 hush money from Ian to keep quiet about the tape of them having sex. Quite honestly, I’d rather listen to a Cliff Christmas record or Jedward doing Ghostbusters. But Janine knows such a tape could incriminate Ian.
Just to make sure, she records him confessing to getting rid of Archie’s laptop containing the sex tape. Janine the laptop dancer is annoyed when he hands over a mere £500. She heads straight to the police station where DCI Marsden, the most clueless detective in Soapland, is brushing up on her impersonation of Miss Marple on a bad day.
Ian and Jane are having a drink in the Vic and planning the next stage of their adoption plan when PC Plod enters and the long arm of the law marches Ian off to a prison cell. We haven’t seen anything like it in the Vic since, oh I don’t know, at least last Friday. The Albert Square pub has a new landlady.
Out goes pint-sized Peggy and in comes Roxy to take charge thanks to Archie’s will.
Roxy does the unthinkable – she falls out with Tracey, the silent barmaid who’s been pulling pints but not dialogue for more years than Jamie Oliver has had hot school dinners. Then she tells Peggy not to interfere and to remove herself from behind the bar. “My bar. You’re barred,”
screams Roxy, before employing a gallery of not-unattractive young ladies to handle the pumps.
In Emmerdale (ITV1), Psycho Sally’s devious plan to win the Rev Ashley’s affections continues with drastic action. She throws herself in front of his car, meaning he has no alternative but to stop and speak to her. What he says doesn’t console her and obsessed Sally has to think up new ways to keep her grip on her the holy man. She tells her new confidante, Edna, that she and Ashley have been sleeping together. Bishop George turns up to sack the Rev Ashley at the most inappropriate time – in the middle of the christening of baby Angelica. “You’re suspended,”
says the Bish, pointing his finger at the Rev like Alan Sugar firing one of the apprentices.
Good Golly Miss Molly. What’s going on in Coronation Street (ITV1)? That nice boy Tyrone is being dumped by his wife of one year Molly. She tells him it’s over, without mentioning that she and his boss, garage boss Kevin, have been cavorting together.
Tyrone, a twit to the last, gets the wrong end of the infidelity stick and assumes that Molly’s secret lover is corner shop boss Dev whereas it’s really Kev.
Kev is sticking with wife Silly Sally, to be known henceforth as Sick Sally, who’s been diagnosed with cancer. Regulars at the Rovers organise a collection for her. This is good news for Joe, who helps himself to the cash to pay off his considerable debuts.
His ruse doesn’t work – he gets caught stealing by Bill and then thumped by debt collector Rick for not coughing up enough loot.
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