SIMPLETON STRIKES OUT
Ian Beale, high-flying entrepenoooer and local businessman, likes nothing better than to swan around his mother's old caff, sporting a red pinny and giving Simpleton hell. So that's what he does - minor things like protracted solicitor negotiations, contract signings and completion dates don't exist in EE world. Sham's already on to her next asset stripping exercise and can't be bothered with Simpleton's whingeing.

Hairwatch: Today Sham's hair is in an Olivia Newton-John/Summer Lovin' do, and very greasy it looks too.

Beale forces Simpers to watch as his minions take down her tasteful neon sign. This proves too much, and Simpers throws a tray of eggs at the window and stalks off, followed by Pat. They're soon back when they realise that the council will offer her nothing more than a B&B room with hot and cold running cockroaches, and Pat runs out of fags. Ian tells Simpers to bugger off, but re-employs Pat with a cheeky grin and a payy rise. Simpers is cross that Pat has betrayed her so, but Pat spins some convoluted logic to argue that Ian is now paying for the Simplet while he and Simpleton kip on Pat's sofa.

Incidentally, if Pat has Eeevil Gavin's old flat, he had quite old ladyish tastes, didn't he? Flowered wallpaper and everything!

Adull takes a swing for Scalliq when he finds Scalliq buying kicking choons from the CD stall instead of Flowers for DJ Ross with some money he borrowed of Kareena. Ash forces a reconciliation, and the Ferreiras pack Scalliq off to the kidney removal unit before he changes his mind again. Having settled into his room (where is this magic hospital with the unlimited single rooms and no public wards?), Scalliq wanders downstairs to annoy DJ Ross some more. He overhears Adull whining about having to be nice to Scalliq, and Ash replying: "Don't worry. Once that lovely, healthy throbbing kidney is inside DJ Ross, we'll turn him out onto the streets to die. Bwahahahaah!" Scalliq runs away. If he was younger, they could have done a "Scalliq divorces his family and moves into a children's home where he lives happily ever after" storyline and shoehorn that into this care home season.

There's some nonsense about Backstreet and tattoos and Teen flaunting her pulchitrude all over the place. Next!

NC Battleaxe battle alert. Mo and Pat decide to lose weight competitively. Maybe Mo will cheat and there will be a storyline on the awful consequences of laxative abuse to coincide with a Body Image and the Elderly season.

TriniDad and Yolande visit Unconvincing Urchin in the children's home, where the kid has a bigger room than I had, festooned with posters of various 'urban' music stars, plus a poster for The Strokes. Hmmm...didn't think that one through, did we, set dressers? So anyway Yolande and TriniDad decide to try fostering. Which means we can look forward to regular appearances by attractively troubled teen muppets in need of TriniDad and Bad Brutha's guidance and help. Oh...goody...

I think we should start doing Footballers Wives updates instead. EE is flying off into the realms of the unbelievable - and I'd rather follow the family life of an illegitimate transgendered baby, its mother/grandmother, father/half-brother and his dead wives mates than this...