We hear Dee-Dee Bailey before we see her, singing It’s Not Right But It’s Okay as she arrives for work at Barlow Legal Services. Adam Barlow is already in the office, so a song about infidelity may not have been the greatest choice considering what’s been going on in her boss’s marriage. But it’s Dee-Dee who gets irked, as Adam continues to look for a way to nail Damon Hay. She tells him it’s not right or OK to take on such a dangerous individual. ‘You’re not Jason Staham,’ she points out.
At The Rovers, Yasmeen Metcalfe asks Stu Carpenter to attend a reading of Mary Barton with her. It’s her favourite Elizabeth Gaskell novel. She tries to entice him by explaining it’s about ‘working-class life in Victorian England, and the plight and degradation of the Manchester cotton weavers.’ Stu confesses that ‘all this book malarkey stuff’ isn’t really his thing. He should go to the reading, though, because then he might be able to find out if the novelist was an ancestor of Damon’s gangster half-brother Harvey Gaskell. Later, Alya Nazir cries off the reading as well, leaving Yasmeen to condemn the cobbles as ‘a cultural wasteland’. Wait, what? She only needs to look at the last few months of Corrie Culture to realise how wrong she is. Yasmeen eventually finds a kindred spirit in Roy Cropper, whose passion for the 1848 novel surpasses even hers.
Adam contrives a way to set attack dog Niall Granger on his nemesis Damon. Damon is forced to scarper before he experiences a plight even a Manchester cotton weaver would find degrading. He drives off with Step On by Happy Mondays on his car stereo and, no doubt, a mind filled with images of his melons being twisted if he hangs around much longer. Step On may not be book malarkey stuff, Yasmeen, but it’s yet another example of the Street’s rich cultural life.
Coronation Street episode 10987/88. Originally aired 23rd June 2023.
