With waves of caffeine coursing through her veins, Elaine Jones asks for Stephen Reid’s help in sorting out their new home. Stephen has to go to work, but he says the fact they have different personalities – he’s decisive, she’s a procrastinator – is a good thing because it prevents them clashing like the cymbals in a Salvation Army band. The sound of a Sally Army band was a Corrie storyline way back in 1964. Charlie Moffitt, who lived at No 5 (now home to Chesney and Gemma Winter-Brown), was worried all that clamorous brass would scare his prize racing pigeon, so he asked them to take their noise elsewhere. Elaine reveals her father and uncle both played in a Salvation Army band, as well as being Morris dancers.
Brian Packham turns up late for work at The Kabin. He tells Rita Tanner he was playing the Italian card game Briscola into the early hours with Isabella Benvenuti. At Underworld, Sarah Barlow talks about the time her mum Gail and brother David did a karaoke performance of Sonny & Cher’s 1965 chart-topper I Got You Babe. The whistlestop tour of the Street’s commercial enterprises continues as we drop in at Roy’s Rolls, where Shona Platt asks Jenny Connor how long Isabella will be staying for. Jenny nicknames her Isabella Rossellini, after the acclaimed Italian actress. And back at Underworld, Stephen tells Carla Barlow that Owen Longford has been sizing up the decor in advance of his purchase. ‘Sizing up the decor?’ she says. ‘It’s not the Oval Office, is it?’ Although construction on the White House was completed in 1800, the modern Oval Office that’s used as the US President’s workspace (or in Donald Trump’s case, a soft play area) has only existed since 1934.
Rita thinks Isabella is a bad influence on Brian. She tells Shona the pair were up late playing ‘Bisotti’, which is actually an Italian pottery range. Rita also speaks disparagingly about Italy’s reputation as a leading coffee nation. She’s willing to bet ‘we had coffee shops in this country when Queen Elizabeth was alive,’ which Shona regards as a gamble well worth taking, until she realises Rita’s referring to Elizabeth I. Meanwhile, Tim Metcalfe is helping his mum Elaine with her unpacking. When he asks why she owns so many gravy boats and they don’t even look like boats, she mentions the gravy train idiom. Tim feels inspired to sing Trains And Boats And Planes, which was written by Hal David and the recently deceased Burt Bacharach. Later, Elaine is looking for her radio alarm clock. She tells Stephen she loves waking up to a Carol service at Christmas, while he expresses a preference for Bay City Rollers and The Beach Boys. We know Stephen is also a big fan of The Beatles. Does he only listen to bands that start with the letter B? Considering how much caffeine Elaine is unwittingly necking, she’s unlikely to be woken up by any kind of music because she won’t be able to fall asleep in the first place.
Stephen’s doping plan appears to have worked when he returns from the shops and finds Elaine lying motionless on the floor. He quickly exits the scene, leaving his fiancée to her fate. On a table in the room we see a paperback copy of Agatha Christie’s novel The Dumb Witness. The plot of the 1937 Hercule Poirot mystery includes an elderly woman falling in her own home, an inheritance and the switching of medication. The parallels with the Corrie storyline are obvious, so can we also expect Stephen’s activities to be investigated by a short Belgian detective with an enormous moustache?
An angry Rita has quit The Kabin, after being told by Isabella she’s too old to run the place. Brian rushes over to Rita’s table at The Rovers, apologies spilling out of him like an overfilled pint, and finds himself likened to Judas Iscariot by an equally irate Jenny. Brian manages to convince Rita to withdraw her resignation, saying the shop without her would be like ‘Laurel without Hardy, Morecambe without Wise’. Eric Morecambe passed away several years before Ernie Wise, so for quite some time we had Wise without Morecambe. Brian mentioned all the right inseparable double acts, but not necessarily in the right order.
Coronation Street episode 10979/80. Originally aired 14th June 2023.
