Aadi Alahan has something important to tell his dad Dev. Dev immediately wonders if Courtney Vance is pregnant, but his daughter Asha observes that Dev is always wondering if Courtney is carrying Aadi’s child. She asks if Dev thinks Aadi is so potent he has super sperm, which isn’t an image that goes down too well at the breakfast table. The film director Kevin Smith pondered the topic of super sperm in his 1995 film Mallrats, where a character detailed the damage Superman’s powerful Kryptonian issue would wreak inside a human body. Aadi’s actual news is that he and Courtney are moving out. They don’t have enough money for the deposit on Shelly Rossington’s old flat, so Asha suggests her brother sells his first love – his Xbox.
Paul Foreman and Billy Mayhew are having a more harmonious breakfast, duetting on the 1755 hymn Oh Happy Day. Summer Spellman recognises the song from the film Sister Act, but gospel stickler Paul points out the song was actually in Sister Act 2: Back In The Habit, which he and Billy watched a few episodes ago. If more evidence were needed of the cultural diversity Weatherfield exhibits while its inhabitants enjoy their toast and cereal, at No 9 Hope Dobbs appears at the breakfast table carrying her tribute to the work of sculptor Jeff Koons. It appears to be a recreation of the American artist’s Balloon Dog series. Koons has also created several works that feature bodily fluids, but that’s a topic far better suited to the earlier conversation at the Alahan household.
Aadi has followed Asha’s advice and, Marie Kondo-style, is saying thank you to his beloved Xbox before he sells it. Jenny Connor will have to say goodbye to The Rovers soon, but as she enters the post-bacchanal, bottle-strewn pub she’s surprised to find Glenda Shuttleworth sleeping in one of the booths. Glenda says she was dreaming about Enrique Iglesias. Jenny must have been party to the details of Glenda’s Enrique fantasies before, because she immediately quotes from the Spanish singer-songwriter’s 2001 global smash Hero. Jenny imagines Enrique was kissing away Glenda’s pain during her nocturnal reverie, but it turns out the dream followed the narrative of 1995’s Experiencia Religiosa. This means it’ll have involved a wind of ecstasy, trembling floors and ascending to the heavens. It’s no wonder Glenda feels inspired to burst into song, until Jenny shushes her. A hungover Daisy Midgeley shuffles in like an extra from The Walking Dead, and reminds Glenda that the previous night she was one step away from singing a mashup of songs from West Side Story, Wicked and Blood Brothers.
Paul and Billy discuss their wedding plans. Paul wants his current earworm Oh Happy Day for the exit music, but it seems it isn’t permitted to have a religious song played at a secular ceremony. Meanwhile, Daisy summons the energy to go to Roy’s Rolls. Daniel Osbourne tells her he’s thinking of asking Ryan Connor to give a talk at the Secure Training Centre about the injuries he sustained. Daisy wants to know when Daniel morphed into the clinical psychologist and TikTok sensation Dr Julie Smith. There”s more morphing underway at The Rovers, as the former staff watch the builders go about their job of renovating the pub. Sean Tully decides to get a pic of the displaced team in front of the Street’s landmark before it’s changed forever. He asks a builder: ‘Village Person No 1, could you take a photograph, please?’ The builder is happy to oblige. He’s dressed in similar fashion to the construction worker from Seventies disco legends The Village People – and not as a cowboy or an American motorcycle cop, which would be weird in the circumstances.
The ex-Rovers staff have decamped to Roy’s Rolls. Despite their declarations of solidarity and never working for the new owners of the pub, Gemma Winter-Brown admits she’s applied for the deputy manager’s job at the refurbished drinking establishment. Daisy tries to appeal to Gemma’s loyalty, citing the example of how football pundits backed Gary Lineker when the Match Of The Day presenter came under fire in March for condemning the government’s Illegal Immigration Bill. Glenda gets her MOTD eras seriously confused when she mistakes Lineker for Jimmy Hill, who last presented the football show in 1988. Sean notes she hasn’t watched MOTD in a long time, which Glenda explains away by admitting to being an Everton fan. Her reasoning makes sense, since it’s entirely understandable an Everton supporter would avoid souring their Saturday evenings by watching woeful performance after woeful performance by the perennially struggling Merseysiders. Jenny walks in at an inopportune moment, and Glenda tells her what ‘I’m Spartacus, here’ has done.
Paul has been feeling some stirrings of faith recently, so Billy invites him to join him in prayer. Paul is unsure what to wish for, but Billy clarifies it isn’t like speaking to the genie in Aladdin. At the Bistro, Daniel and Ryan discuss which music artists have had the best-ever run of great albums. Daniel kicks off with REM’s sequence from Murmur to New Adventures In Hi-Fi. He reasons that the 10-album, 13-year run reached its peak with Lifes Rich Pageant in 1986. Ryan proposes Stevie Wonder’s 1970-1980 sequence of Signed, Sealed & Delivered to Hotter Than July, which gets Daniel’s approval and ours. There’s more Motown talk at the garage, where Evelyn Plummer is on the phone and struggling to think of a phonetic for the letter J. She eventually alights upon Wonder’s labelmates ‘The Jackson 5’. Like the soul five-piece’s song said: ‘ABC, it’s easy as 123’.
Proving that Corrie’s producers believe in getting the maximum value from their sets, Aadi and Courtney are settling into Shelly’s old flat. Then a neighbour starts playing Uptown Funk by Mark Ronson (Feat Bruno Mars) at full volume. But glass-half-full Aadi declares it’s now their song, and the pair christen their cohabitation with a dance.
Coronation Street episode 11071/11072. Originally aired 27th Sept 2023.
