TEN THINGS WE HATE ABOUT IAN
Well, Friday was a night of low-key revelations, wasn't it? After last week's evening of Olympic fun, this week, we got an hour-long epic about waiting. Moomin and Poline waited at the Orspital; Jim waited in the pub with a small group of the ones who can (thankfully) act, plus Denman; MMartin got drunk.
Moomin waves MMartin off to his lads night out, then discovers from Poline that Dot isn't touring Scotland playing accordion-based folk-jazz with Nigel (whatever happened to hKipper?) after all. She strops at Poline and decides to use her Moomin powers to make Dot better at the orspital. Poline isn't best pleased.
Hostilities heat up outside the operating theatre, and Jim decides that he'd be better off down at the pub. There's an argument about where to put Dot's handbag, and then they settle down to a not-bad two-hander that lets Natalie Cassidy act her little socks off, for once. Poline repeats various Lou mantras on Life, Selling Veg and Everything; and we discover:
- Dot punched Charlie Cotton. That's why he left
- Dot tried to get into teacher training college, but nobody would accept a single mother - the fools...they could have conducted LSD tests on Little Nasty Nick
- Dot used to look like Audrey Hepburn
Eventually Moomin cries: "Didn't your mum ever shut up?", and Poline admits that Lou was an irritating old bat, but that Moomin is but a link in the Walford cycle of harridanry. Poline was in Dot's place, Dot was in Lou's place, Moomin was in Poline's place. Moomin looks uncomfortable at the idea of getting a glowing white wig.
Jim takes Moomin's mobile, in case something happens, and goes off to the pub. Down at the pub, the middle-aged men are listening anxiously to Ethel 2.0 trying to bore Simplet to death with the same offkey song over and over again. Denman, Mickney and the Muppetz are playing pool. Then Martin turns up and the muppets go to the only nightclub in East London. Mickney waffles dickishly about women, MMartin says he'd never cheat on Moomin, nevernevernever. Of course, he wakes up at dawn, sharing a duvet with a girl who looks spookily like Shell. Backstreet can't get hold of Kellay to tell her he wuvs her, but I lost interest.
Fool won't serve Jim because it's closing time. Jim wails: "But my Dorothy's got caaaancer!", which gets him a seat and a pint quicker than a very quick pint-getting ploy. Fool locks in everyone. Ash and Denman play pool and go Grrr! at each other. Unfortunately no shirts were ripped off. Ian, Fool, Jim, Minty and TriniDad talk about being young and attractive. Minty admits that he's on an Atkins-style cauliflower diet, which is turning him into a human hovercraft. Ian admits that he was born a fully-formed, 35-year-old twat, and wiffles on about bullies and bog brushes...
Byrite walks in on the lock-in, and tries to sack Fool. Ian punches Byrite. Byrite punches him back. Denman gets him to leave Ian alone, and let them all carry on drinking. They sit in a corner and reminisce about the old days: "Remember when you used to beat up old ladies?"; "Remember when you torched my sister's club? Happy days..." They manage to skirt around the whole sharing Sham thing, and Denman remembers that Byrite looked after his dying mother, all alone. Is this supposed to give us an insight into Byrite's Byriteness or something? Minty glowers from his farty cloud on the other side of the bar and mutters jealously.
Jim gets a phone call. Dot's OK. Hurrah! Sorry it's not very funny, but there wasn't much to laugh about on Friday.
