FLYING DOWN FROM RIO
Babs is still telling anyone who will listen that she’s not afraid of Tony Bennett yadda yadda. It’s time for Fill’s court hearing – which has taken almost as long to come around as it does in real life, but Babs says Davetta needs her more than Fill (and she’s not even a Mitchell), and Davetta discovers that Babs is dead scared of Tony and his slammy door habit. She tells TB to lay off terrorising old ladies, but TB just twirls his moustache and hires a sad-eyed assassin to give Babs a pre-Hallowe’en surprise.
Agarry and Minty play a trick on Ian, but they don’t realise that he still calls the shots, the fools. He sacks them and spends the rest of the week looking for replacement mechanics. This is another of those ‘millions of people in London and only two working mechanics in the East End’ moments that we don’t really need to dwell on. Anyway, Fill throws some ketchup at Ian, calls him a grass, and tells him to re-employ Agarry and Minty or else. Ian does as he is told when his Aikido master skillz fail him.
Ah yes, Fill. Well, somehow he gets off this charge that has him bang to rights because ODen’s dead or some witness says he confused Fill with another potato-headed thug wandering around the deserted factory on the same night. Anyway, Grant appears too, just in time to stop Peggy from having her wig rearranged by the sad-eyed assassin, who gets a beating anyway, just so that we can see that Fill and Grant are back, and badder than ever. Actually I had forgotten that they were quite a good double act in the old days, when you had semi-believable scripts and the lovely Martin Kemp to look at.
Shazza won’t believe Denman when he says that Lady MacDenth is a murdering killer. Denman glowers prettily. LadyDen throws a little party for Shazza and taunts Denman, who tries to get her to admit that she murdered Oden in a bizarre one-upmanship ritual.
Grant breaks into the Vic, scares LadyDen and throws Denman roughly against the wall. Grrr! SMASH! Shazza appears and starts shouting at Grant like they never split up. Grant thinks Denman is LadyDen’s boyfriend (speaking of which, how come Lee managed to sleep through all this?), but Shazza says: “He’s my husband, you prat!” Fill: “Eh? He was your brother last time we spoke…” Grant, who is after all married to Rebekah Wade, doesn’t see a problem with this, but he just likes growling at Denman. It goes on in this vein for the next hour or so
Fill and Grant visit Sham in prison. She does her frog face and blubbers apologies about losing the Mitchell Family Fortune. Grant makes a sad face and says that all that matters is getting Sham out of prison. Erm, there’s still an accessory to murder charge isn’t there? She’ll still be banged up for that. Anyway, Sham says that they have to keep Zoe out of it because there’s no way she’s coming back from Hollywood (Co. Down) and her glittering career as a Liv Tyler looky likey to do yet another Enders courtroom battle.
TB sees Davetta enjoying herself in a jolly working-class fashion with JoJo and Slutty, and points out that he didn’t send her to St Poshoes Academy to do A-levels and everything so that she could work on a market stall. Davetta tells him that she’s 16 and she can do what she wants. Kat displays moxie…again…and off Johnny scuttles. Davetta tells Etina to leave TB because he’s a bastard. Actually, he’s a really good bastard – I’m a bit scared of him and his granny-bashing ways. Added to this he has also started a very slurpy affaire with Honey Trap Amy. ETina can read the signs and is sad. But then Tony decides that a nice big fluffy wedding is exactly the thing that will make Davetta come running back because then ETina can be her mum and do all that woman stuff like talking about feelings and shopping. He half-heartedly proposes to ETina. ETina: happy as only a poor deluded fool can be.
Fill admits that he and Shazza did the nasty for a while, and Grunt forgives him. Well, whoopee. Look, I’m aware that a busty blonde with her own pub is every Nuts reader’s dream date, but Shazza is not the Holy Fucking Grail. And since she’s a) married to Denman and b) doesn’t even own the pub any more, she’s not even a Grail-shaped beacon. Denman gets jealous. Especially when Shazza visits Sham and searches her soul (and the pub accounts) for a bit, then decides that LadyDen really did do it after all. Denman growls: “That’s what I’ve been telling you for weeks! Grrr!”,and flounces off to live at the bookie’s, where he probably sleeps with one of Byrite’s cufflinks under his pillow or something.
Finally, Mmartin admits that he went to Moominchild’s birthday party and posted her card by accident. Moomin explains that she writes a creepy stalker letter every year, but never sends them. She wants to freak Moominchild out when she’s 18 or something. She meets up with AdoptoGran, and they talk about Mmartin’s pain. More Growing Apart tedium.
Other news:
TriniDad gets the car lot, despite not knowing the first thing about buying or selling cars. How come Fill owns it these days? How come ODen missed that one?
No sign of Fool and Ethel 2.0. Be thankful for small mercies.
Oh yes, and the Bealemeister is the Mystery Buyer. He tries to pull out of the deal, but TB threatens that his revenge would make the Mitchells look like the Teletubbies. Ooooh!
