Telly Talk

Coronation Street
The lovely ladies of Weatherfield must be tearing their hair out.All those years of waiting for a decent fella (other than Roy Cropper) to darken their doorsteps and – wouldn’t you just know it? – he turns out to be gay.

Alas dreamboat Marcus may not be about to tip Fiz the wink or whisk Liz down the aisle at the fourth time of asking (although you probably don’t have to be gay to balk at that prospect) but it doesn’t stop us sighing wistfully every time he strides on screen, compassionate, discerning, humorous... and presumably deaf, poor lamb, since he’s picked screechy Sean as his life-partner.

Certainly, Marcus’s presence helped distract us from Maria’s rather torturous still-birth scenes – and the sight of her poor “perfect” baby’s tiny hand peeping over the top of the blanket as she cradled him.

Corrie was doing that heartbreaking juxtaposition thing we learned about in English Lit lessons at school, for while Maria was suffering in Wethy General, Carla was hooting with Liam in the Rovers about his “clingy as a shower-curtain” girlfriend.

Still, Maria should have told him, shouldn’t she? Daft bint.

Alas next week, Liam finally learns what’s happened to Maria and their baby – and turns to Carla for comfort. And we know precisely what kind of comfort she’ll have in mind... and we’re not thinking floral scented fabric conditioner either.

Elsewhere, Janice was telling “Urr Lay-anne” just what she thought of her cheese-brained pyromania in a lecture that was scarier than a Roy Keane half-time team talk. “Yurr be’avin lahk sum kahnd uf lur-lahf ler-deh!” she spat. Well, that told her.