Evelyn Plummer has spent her first night at Roy Cropper’s place. She comes downstairs to the cafe and starts babbling about mackerel and the Bay Of Biscay, which totally confuses Roy, Daisy Midgeley and George Shuttleworth. She explains that Roy (who she calls Captain Ahab, after the obsessive whaler from Herman Melville’s 1851 novel Moby-Dick) was blasting out The Shipping Forecast at 5.30am. Roy argues that he finds the British institution soothing, but Evelyn doesn’t believe that a man ‘blaring on about German Bight and Doggers’ can possibly be soothing at such an ungodly hour. Evelyn says the unpleasant situation was compounded by the ‘loon’ staring down at her from a poster on her bedroom wall. Roy tells her the loon is Robert Smith. Evelyn is staying in Nina Lucas’s room and The Cure’s frontman is one of her goth icons. ‘Well, if that’s the cure, I’d rather have the disease,’ sneers Evelyn. It’s about time Corrie’s producers gave us a glimpse of some characters’ bedrooms, if only to find out whether Nina has more goth posters – and to hear Roy talk about Alien Sex Fiend and Mors Syphilitica.
Later, Roy and Evelyn’s conversation switches to jacket potatoes. He declares the Maris Piper to be the Rolls-Royce of spuds, which annoys Evelyn because she’s just purchased ‘a couple of Robin Reliants’. Meanwhile, Shelly Rossington plays Paul Foreman a gospel rendition of Amazing Grace. She tells him she wants it played at her funeral. ‘Banger,’ he proclaims, before revealing some of the things he’d like to see and do before his time comes. Paul’s list includes ‘the iron men on Crosby Beach,’ referring to Antony Gormley’s 2005’s Another Place sculpture of 100 cast-iron figures.
At The Rovers, a hammered Stu Carpenter ‘treats’ everyone to his unsolicited version of Steel River by Chris Rea. Drink is also playing a part in the proceedings at Viaduct Bistro, where Darren Vance deals with his wife Courtney’s admission that she’s having an affair. Dev Alahan is more interested in pushing forward with their business affairs. ‘Go big or go home,’ is Dev’s toast, which started life in the Nineties as a sales slogan for an exhaust system used on Harley-Davidsons motorcycles. At Roy’s Rolls, Evelyn proffers a hen’s teeth-rare apology for not appreciating Roy’s hospitality. He, in turn, promises to wear headphones when listening to The Shipping Forecast at the crack of dawn. ‘In fact, it’s not been quite the same since Brian Perkins retired,’ he concedes. Radio 4’s senior newsreader, who hung up his mic in 2003, had a voice that was synonymous with a sense of traditional Englishness, even though he didn’t move to this country from his native New Zealand until his twenties. As Stu sobers up after his drinking binge, he assures Alya Zanir that he’ll get his act together and show everyone – including ‘Uncle Tom Cobley’ – he’s the right person to be looking after his granddaughter Eliza Woodrow. Uncle Tom Cobley was a character in the Devonian folk song Widecombe Fair and has absolutely nothing to do with the Weatherfield cobbles.
Coronation Street episode 11057/11058. Originally aired 13th Sept 2023.
