How come Cain Dingle in
Emmerdale manages to get a teenager pregnant,
have a farmer's wife in his garage, even though she can't stand the sight of him, and now, bed a dusky maid young enough to be his daughter? Does he have that animal magnetism that so many women find irresistible? Or is the actor who plays him, Jeff Hordley, bribing the scriptwriters?
Whatever, grandfather Cain is about to become a daddy again, although he doesn't know it, having paid juvenile delinquent Amy to have an abortion.
Meanwhile, Ashley, the local vicar, is just coming to terms with his wife's adultery with the local chef. Having resisted the temptation to smack Marlon in the face, he is still tortured by the thought of his wife in another man's bed. Actually, it didn't happen, as Laurel, Marlon and millions of
Emmerdale viewers know, but don't let's insult Ashley's intelligence by trying to convince him this was indeed the case.
Over in
EastEnders, although blonde teen Lola is stunningly attractive, like Amy she a bit like
the landlord's daughter, ie not the kind of girl any young man would take home to his mother. She has just found out she is pregnant, and is not unhappy about it, but who's the daddy? Surely not Ben Mitchell, the fifteen year old who was caught by the local grocer playing tonsil tennis with another boy in the alley? As the saying goes, there's nought queerer than folk.
While there are no questionmarks over Dr Khan's sexuality, this bloke is a real enigma; on the one hand he is chasing his patient Tanya, horrified that she is not keeping her radio-therapy appointments and thereby jeopardising not only her health but her very life, while on the other hand he is forever playing mindgames with his lover, and has now resorted to physically abusing her. His lover is the once feisty matriarch Zainab, who was his first wife in Pakistan, now, Dr Khan and circumstances have reduced her to a shadow of her former self.
Finally, in Manchester's
Coronation Street, there is little or no mention next week of another teenage pregnancy, this is the poor girl whose live-in lover Chesney had to choose between her and
his terminally ill dog. Well, no one ever claimed a woman was a man's best friend.
If she went the extra mile for him, Ciaran's wife-to-be is unlikely to be so understanding when she finds out that not only has he blown the money for their wedding reception in a poker game but has just been sacked from his new job after being caught red-handed while attempting to recoup his losses by doing a cash-in-hand catering job at the expense of his new boss.
He could always buy a lottery ticket and hope he wins two hundred grand as did local grease monkey and adulterer Kevin Webster, but on second thoughts that may not be such a good idea. If a man is playing Texas Hold 'Em heads up, and
can't win with a straight flush, he'd best not gamble at all.