Daniel Osbourne is determined to make a go of taking over The Rovers, but Daisy Midgeley isn’t convinced they have what it takes to run a pub. ‘You teach bad lads how to write in sentences, and I used to batter my lashes for likes. Dragon’s Den are hardly knocking down the door, are they?’ is her brutally frank assessment of their suitability. When Daisy tells Jenny Connor about the plan, the former Rovers owner is delighted – receiving the news in a face pack that makes her look like a beauty-conscious Michael Myers from Halloween. Later, over a brew at Roy’s Rolls, a pore-cleansed, jubilant Jenny enthuses about the idea of working behind the bar with Daisy again. She declares they’re ‘the Cagney & Lacey of slop trays’, but Daisy is too young to know the Eighties show about two New York cops.
Someone who has no trouble remembering the household names of yesteryear is Evelyn Plummer. She tells Tyrone Dobbs about the time she got trapped in a lift with 1980s variety star Marti Caine. Meanwhile, Daisy feels overwhelmed by the amount of forward planning Daniel is doing, especially since he’s doing most of it without even consulting her. She says it feels like her head is spinning. ‘What, like The Exorcist?’ he replies sarcastically. Daisy holds back from telling him his mother sucks cocks in Hell. Satan’s gaff does get a mention at No 10a, though, as Rita Tanner and Jenny Connor discuss where serial killer Stephen Reid might be now. ‘In the fiery pits of Hell,’ is Jenny’s theory. Jenny dips into her goody bag of telly sleuths again when she praises Rita for her sharp mind. ‘You’re like Jessica Fletcher in designer labels,’ she tells Rita, who’s visibly flattered to be mentioned in the same breath as the fictional author and detective from Murder, She Wrote.
Eliza Woodrow reveals she has two tickets for a Christmas concert, and she gives one of them to a grateful Yasmeen Metcalfe. ‘I thought this was a hotter gig than Billie Eyelash,’ jokes Yasmeen, before being corrected on her pop knowledge by Eliza. At Viaduct Bistro, Audrey Roberts shares some of the contents of her son Stephen’s personal journal. Despite a tsunami of sarcasm from David Platt, Audrey insists the killer Canuck was a lover of life. She says he wrote about his passion for Whistler (the ski resort in British Columbia, presumably, and not the 19th Century painter).
The Dobbs household continues to be threatened by the owner of Taylor the cockapoo. Tyrone decides to report him to the police. Evelyn calls the thug Bully Beef, after the bruising character from The Dandy, but we discover his actual name is Terry Fensley. With everything now in the open about Daisy cheating on Daniel, as well as Daniel scuppering Ryan Connor’s job offer, things get dark as the couple have a full-on fallout. An aggressive Daniel oversteps the mark, then shifts to mocking Daisy’s vocabulary. ‘Oh, she’s digging into that thesaurus,’ he patronises, in response to her verbal barrage. She walks out, leaving Daniel to reflect on a future without her. In front of sign on his wall that proclaims ‘Yes sir I can boogie’, from the 1977 song by Baccara, Daniel reaches for a bottle and seeks comfort in Bacchus.
Coronation Street episode 11135/11136. Originally aired 13th Dec 2023.
