Babymamma Night Part I - 23.07.2012

Before I start, I just want to say it's been a pleasure fending off the Troll Brigade sent my way this afternoon, by Monalisa62003. I was wondering where all those accusations were originating - accusations that I was impersonating her and tweeting myself. They were lies propagated by Mona. She changed her name on her Twitter account to @TweetLegend77 from simply @TweetLegend. Then she opened a new troll account under @TweetLegend in order to send me selectively foul-mouthed tweets, amongst them, a direct threat.

However, she forgot, initially, to link her Digital Spy account to her new name under Twitter, so when one clicked on the Twitter icon on DS, you got the foul-mouthed troll account. She's obviously realised her mistake and removed the Twitter link from DS. My warning to contact the Lurgan police still stands.

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However ... onto the first part of a double bill.

I want to like this show again, but I can't. There are just too many unlikeable characters and too many wrongs which need to be rectified before the show is on track again. Tonight's first part, had too many scenes and too many characters shoehorned in.

We had the following:-

- banter from Denise and Zainab which resolved itself

- disclosure that the Argee Bahjee wasn't making any money. (Cue Tamwar to announce he's going back to school.)

- Kat's sour-face cheating on Alfie, pissed off that he's arranged for her to do - you know - what a landlady is supposed to do, like serve drinks and keep the business open.

- Foreshadowing of Shirley's abseil down the side of the Vic, to help baby George.

- Michael sulking and ignoring Janine because of trust issues.

- Janine sulking and wanting Michael to be with her, but scared of opening up and trusting him. (I don't blame her).

- Cora being obnoxious. As usual.

- Billy wafting about worried about the torch etc.

- The football team.

- Lola wafting about being rude.

What else is new? All that in 30 minutes.

There were some good bits - the first scene when the remaining Mitchells surprised Billy with the theme from Chariots of Fire and got bored by Billy's detailed description of a torch bearer's duties. Roxy, who looks good with her natural hair colour, had the line of the night about the torch "kiss," asking if Billy were going to make the first move.

Memo to Billy, who had a go at Jay for bringing him a gift for his Olympic run - Jay is anything but a bad influence on Lola. If anything, Billy is the bad influence. From day one that she moved in, he has not tried in any way to implement any sort of routine, discipline or structure. She's been rewarded and given approbation by Billy for committing acts which are nothing more than criminal - the crashing of a car into Ian Beale's business; robbing off Roxy, you name it. It's been Billy who's echoed her victim's hue and cry of "but-it's-not-my-fault-it's-so-unfair-I'm-pregnant."

If anything, it's been Lola who's been a bad influence on Jay.

The theme I saw in tonight's episode was the SOWS brigade - the Society of Walford Slappers - I could say "sluts" but some asshole would probably take offence.

I've often said - and so have many others - that Lola and Whitney are future Kats, that Kat is a future Shirley and that Shirley is a future Rose or Cora. And tonight, under one roof, we had Kat, Cora and Lola at their hypocritical best. Cora taking the moral high ground and judging Lola, when she, herself, is scrubbed up trailer trash with a bad past and a police record. Joy the Widow was right - the cancer charity who fronts the charity shop, would like nothing more than to know that Cora's got an "arrangement" with the local undertaker to rip off dead people's property, keep the best bits and sell the tat at a profit. She is worse than Old Mo, but at least Mo doesn't pretend to be something she isn't.

Kat's another slapper taking the moral high ground. She had about as much right to tick Cora off as Cora had to tick Lola off - because Kat's cheating on a marriage and shifting the blame for her deceit everywhere but her sorry ass. If anything, I loved Cora's warning about her mouth. Foreshadowing of things to come? Will Cora the busybody hypocrite find out Kat's been fucking around? I do hope so. It was disgusting to see such a bitch on heat so anxious to get to a football pitch. Or to a fuckflat.

As for Lola the Unlikeable, she's found a new hero. Kat will teach her how to cheat and lie and how never to accept responsibility.

The Tube scenes with the football team were just rank. Especially the phones all getting a text message. Shaggerman is still Derek. Jack seems to have a bevy of women swanning about and Michael's too much of a psychopath. Max is out. Ray, whom I'm finding increasingly dislikeable, is too much in love with himself. In fact, Ray defines the word "wanker." It's Derek, just because everyone reckons he hasn't been getting any action. Plus he as a bone to pick with Alfie. The Tube fiasco was so staged and contrived, it simply wasn't funny. Forced.

The rest was meh. Even the breaking of Lola the Unlikeable's waters. Part II to follow. Can it get any worse?

P S ... special mention to Janine and Billy. I've always liked their dynamic. Even though she sacked him, it won't last. He's really her only true friend, even though he abuses that friendship. He's the only person, bar Pat (who's dead), who dares speak the truth to her.

The Resident Troll

Just a few choice messages from a troll. Monalisa actually changed her name on her old account and recreated another account under her old Twitter name, just to send me these three messages. Please note the most recent one, which can be construed, I think, as a direct threat.

As I've blocked her, and her little satellite friends who came onto my page today to spread venom, would someone kindly tell her that unless she stops this campaign which she thinks is very clever, I will have no other recourse than to contact the police in the area where she lives in Northern Ireland because her last tweet actually broke the law.

Also, she thinks she's clever by lying all over the place that I made up the above account to impersonate her. That can easily be proven to be false.

Seriously, Mona, crawl back under the bridge. I'm not as nice as Kath Beedles, who asked you nicely to leave her alone.

Lola Gives Birth Tonight ... Who Gives a Shit?

Tonight sees two episodes of Eastenders, built around Billy Mitchell being an Olympic torch bearer and his granddaughter - granddaughter! - giving birth in a special seven-minute live segment during the second episode.

Needless to say, the live segment features Cora, whom TPTB are turning into a less-than-brilliant amalgamation of Pat, Peggy, Pauline, Dot and Big Mo. She's everywhere and everything for everybody ... Well, that's what the production team would like her to be. Instead, she's just an interfering old lag with a penchant for booze and a sharp lip.

Anyway, Lola gives birth, after what seems to have been a lifetime. Cora assists and ends up telling Lola she'll be a great mum. Now, that's two older women in as many episodes who've assessed that Lola will be a great mum - but considering that those two older women were Shirley and Cora, and neither of them were candidates for Mother of the Year, Lola will probably be better than they were, at least until the kid's taken into care.

Of course, Eastenders has spent the better part of Lola's screen time - and especially in recent episodes - emphasizing what a selfish, entitled, hardassed, totally unlikeable and irresponsible little chav she is. The very fact that she fell pregnant in the first place is testimony to her irresponsibility. Even the circumstances of the less-than-immaculate conception were as well. She blithely decided to fuck Ben just so Ben could figure out if he were gay or not, and she's ignorant enough to ascertain that because she was left less than satisfied, sexually, that - yep - Ben was gay. And that miscalculation was even more evidence of the level of Lola's ignorance.

Let's not beat about the bush (to use an entirely unintentional crude pun). Ben got enough of a stiffie to ejaculate enough sperm to make Lola pregnant. So poor Little Girl Mitchell comes into this world with a skank for a mother and a psychopath murderer for a dad ... what chance does she have? Especially with Billy Mitchell as a great-granddad.

But the purpose behind all this build-up of Lola the Unlikeable, is to show the viewers that she probably will be a brilliant, responsible mum, and we'll all love her to bits.

Except we won't.

This pregnancy was just another dinky storyline interposed with loads of other storylines, most of which were bad, to the point that it was forgotten. For the better part of this year, we didn't even know Lola was pregnant. Janine had a bump that was noticeable. Lola didn't. And the way she drank, the kid should at least shoot out in the throes of the DTs.

Truth is, no one gives a rat's arse about Lola the Unlikeable, and the sooner we see her leaving the Square, dragging Miss Damien behind her, will be a better day all around, because that will be one less unlikeable character played by one less pisspoor actress.

Since January, we've had two pregnancies on the Square - Lola and Janine. In the general scheme of things, Janine is the more important of the two characters and the more experienced actress, so why wasn't she allotted the live slot to give birth? Is this an Olympic thing or Eastenders' nod to that eternal loser and background character, Billy Mitchell, in order to validate his even being there?

No one gives a shit about Lola or her baby.

And one final mini-rant ... there's someone on Digital Spy called vaslav37, whose every other post is about Cora being landlady of the Vic. His latest perambulation is that Cora and Sharon should have the Vic jointly, and he's another idiot pushing the meme of Sharon being Cora's daughter. Even though it's been pointed out to him countless numbers of times that we know Sharon's birth mother. She's Carol Hanley, and we've seen her. To him, it makes no difference. In fact, he blithely proclaims that if the producers wanted to forget Carol Hanley, they should go ahead and forget she'd ever been introduced, because for him, it works better to have Sharon as Cora's long-lost daughter and a sister to bouncy Tan.

Ne'mind the long-term viewers who know Sharon's backstory and remember her reunion with her birth mother. We don't count. Anything to promote the ever-increasing cancer known as the Branning family and their satellites, and if Sharon's presence amongst them can validate their existence, stuff everything that's gone before.

Little Things Pleasing Little Minds

There's a thread on Digital Spy at the moment, which is one of various "cheerleader" threads. It's all about Eastenders being better at the moment.

Better what?

Better acting as a laxative when ExLax or DulcoLax won't do the trick? Probably, because, as various posters point out, it's so full of shit at the moment, it's horrendous. Still, the usual suspects won't brook any criticism.

Truth is, there were only two good things to come from 2012 so far on Eastenders - Heather's death and its ensuing aftermath (and that's in serious danger of losing its impact, the longer it's stretched out) and Janine's wedding.

Everything else has, well ... sucked. Even Pat's death was used as a vehicle to feature the Brannings, a family of no-marks and scrubbed-up trailer trash who had little or nothing to do with Pat during her life, but who all featured heavily in her death and its aftermath. Besides, the two weeks after Pat's death actually devolved into retconning David Wicks and Carol into a tragic love's young dream.

Anyone who's watched the show prior to 2000 will know that Carol and David were nothing more than an exploratory grope and shag behind the bike sheds, which resulted in Bianca. Those were the days when Max and Jack were older than Carol too. The truth behind Carol's true love was that David was the third "true love" Carol had experienced since she returned to the show - the fourth, if you count Connor.

There was the military recruiter, who turned out to be married; Connor; Eddie Moon and David. In the cases of both Eddie Moon and David, each one was supposedly "the one." And when they proved not to be, Carol projected her disappointment and disillusionment on her common sense-challenged daughter.

The rest of the year has been teenaged angst, a week-long adolescent drinking problem affecting a character whose personality is so filled with entitlement and self-obsession that no one gives a rat's arse about her, and Cora here, Cora there, Cora every bleeding where.

And Kat fucking around. Again.

So if these people think that this is the best Eastenders can do, I sure as hell wouldn't want to see what they consider to be the worst.

The Real State of Eastenders

In case you've missed it, Sid Owen says he's never returning to Eastenders. Ever. And he sounds pretty angry about it. You can read the article in full here. It's not particularly long or taxing and even the lowest common denominator of wit (currently the demographic to whom the soap is appealing) would understand everything without any difficulty.

Anyway, Sid sounds pretty browned off.

I’ve retired. I’m now living permanently in France, where I have been on-and-off for the last 10 years, and I’m running my restaurant.

“I haven’t quite made my ­millions but I’m happy doing that and I’ll never be back.

“I’m done with the UK and I hope that you will never see me on your TV screens again ­because I’m done and I’ve ­retired. I much prefer the ­lifestyle I have now.

Yep, pretty browned off, especially that last bit. Checking in for a look at Digital Spy's soaps forum this morning, I noticed that Walford Web resident know-it-all and name-dropper TimWil, allegedly a writer from New York who likes to sidle up to the rich and famous before injecting a name or two into a conversation with a pleb in order to impress, had put in an appearance on the forum to impart a juicy bit of gossip/rumour as fact.

According to TimWil, who once got a lift from June Brown, there was talk of sacking Owen back in 2011, but eventually TPTB decided to let it look as though he were leaving. Part of that actually sounds plausible, considering the way the last regime at Eastenders, from late 2010 onwards, wantonly and deliberately lied to viewers, a practice that the fragrant Lorraine Newman seems to be continuing as well. Also, it doesn't surprise me either that Bryan Kirkwood would seek to break up the Ricky-and-Bianca dynamic. After all, they were an established and very iconic couple, who could have been the natural successors to Pauline and Arthur; and Kirkwood liked nothing better than fucking up established characters, especially the iconic variety and especially if they were involved in an equally iconic relationship with an equally iconic character.

Here's my theory - and, unlike TimWil, I'm presenting it entirely as a theory, not fact. The closest I've ever come to being within the airspace of an Eastenders' actor was when I found myself at a Buck House Garden Party and standing, in wait for the Queen to appear, behind a morning-suited Steve McFadden, so I can't presume to present opinion or rumour as fact.

Anyhoo, cast your mind back to the end of 2010. The babyswap storyline is just waiting to happen, and Patsy Palmer goes into an early labour and has to take maternity leave early. Now fast forward to late January-early February 2012, when Bryan Kirkwood announces that Patsy Palmer would be taking an extended maternity leave of one year, instead of the requisite six months. Shortly after that, he announced that Sid Owen would also be taking a sabbatical of a year in order to work on a water charity of which he was a patron. His last word on the subject was that "Ricky and Bianca would be back on our screens sometime in 2012."

No cause for alarm ... until Palmer issued a statement through her agent, saying that whilst she was on maternity leave, she realised her contract was up for renewal and decided not to renew it.  In an interview with Hello! magazine, she confirmed that her decision was influenced by the babyswap storyline, and that she had decided not to return, that she had finished her contract with Eastenders and didn't want to be tied to anything. In fact, if and when the show decided to have her back, she'd consider it, but at that moment, her family was the most important thing. Furthermore, in February of that year, Palmer admitted that she didn't miss Eastenders in the least. As if to dot an "i" and cross a further "t", later in 2011, she fell pregnant again, but miscarried. If that pregnancy had proven viable, Patsy Palmer would have never returned.

What prompted her to do so was Kirkwood offering her a contract allowing her to work six months and then take six months off. She calls it a "working mum's contract" and wouldn't all we working mothers like to have such a thing!

But now we know the truth about Sid Owen, whose departure at the beginning of this year in the wake of Pat's death left many viewers with mouths agape wondering if Ricky had, indeed, left for good (via his receiving Julia's Theme upon his departure), I have to ask what is the point of keeping Bianca afloat? I know the general opinion was that Ricky, without Bianca, didn't work; but when Ricky returned for the few episodes surrounding Janine's wedding, he worked very well as a single dad coping with small children - something we've never seen on Eastenders before. Yet in the Eastenders redesigned by Kirkwood, male characters - unless they are Brannings - are pejorative things, and mouthy, chavvy women are the strong'uns. So Ricky is sacrificed, and we all await the return of Bianca, the Bianca whom most viewers lately described as "vile."

How can she work? She's another eternal victim, blaming everything but her own fecklessness and lack of common sense for her poverty-stricken plight. She's alienated her uncle, Ian - who, by all accounts, will be going through an emotional trauma of his own when she reappears; she's alienated her sister-in-law, Janine, who actually did try to look after Bianca's brood, but who will also be dealing with personal matters and preparing to leave right about the time Bianca returns. She was caught by the market inspector stealing from a trader, so employment on a stall is out of the question. She's a single mum with three school-aged kids, one of whom is a rude little wotsit. What man - and there are limited men on the Square at the moment, would hitch his wagon to this rude mare?

There are rumours abounding that Ms Newman is reviewing Palmer's contract. Let's hope Lorraine shows more balls than she's shown in not changing any of the crapiola storylines left over by Birkwood, and calls time on Bianca's character. This time, for good.

But Ricky and Bianca weren't the only porkie pie viewers were served by Bryan Kirkwood. There was the little matter of Jane Beale.

Laurie Brett was another pregnant actress in 2011, who left early in the year on maternity leave. Her leaving line was Jane's divorce from Ian being finalised. Jane received the cafe as part of her settlement and also got Julia's Theme as she walked away from the Square. Six months later, in November 2011, Laurie Brett returned, with an announcement from Bryan Kirkwood, that Brett would be returning for three months, then taking a sabbatical of a year in order to spend time with her new daughter. Jane returned, found Ian with Mandy and Mas divorced from Zainab, and she promptly succumbed to her passion for Mas.

However, she left at the end of January for a new job as a sous-chef in Cardiff. Sounded pretty final, especially since her boss told her there was a chance she'd go to Paris to work in a year's time. Well, it was. Final, I mean.

After Brett left, again leaving viewers scratching their heads in wonder, it was announced that she was joining the cast of Waterloo Road. It was then that Brett announced that she had actually called time on Jane because the character had been running around in circles for sometime, and she felt it was time to put an end to her tenure.

Here's the actual truth behind Bryan Kirkwood's lie: Laurie Brett took her maternity leave, knowing that when she returned, she'd have three months left on her current contract. She agreed to return for that, but decided she didn't want to renew it. She left.

Now, it looks as if the whole damned shabang has gone into bunker mode, and I'm left wondering about the two most recent high profiled imminent departures. Although the Twittersphere was alight for weeks with rumours of June Brown's departure, it was finally announced, just a mere two weeks before she left, that Brown was taking a six-month leave in order to travel and finish her autobiography. At first, that was denied by Brown, who stated she didn't know how long she'd be gone, that she missed the company of Barbara Windsor and Pam St Clement, and that Polly Perkins was also leaving (something we'd not yet been told), so she was at a bit of a loss, thought she'd do some different things and finish an autobiography she started in 2003.

Dot was spirited off to visit her granddaughter in her aged mini cooper in the dead of night with little fanfare. I still am suspicious that she will return, and I could see the sneaks now in power at Eastenders fobbing us off with this lie and a low-key departure in order to stem any mass pandemonium radged up by the tabloids about the state of things at Eastenders.

Ditto the departure of Jo Joyner. Please note: Joyner has not renewed her contract. That doesn't mean she's taking a break; it means she's leaving. As much as she says she's going to return, that really isn't down to her - it's down to Lorraine Newman, or whoever will be in charge when they decide that it really might be interesting to have Tanya pop up on the Square again. That could be in two years' time, it could be in five years' time, it could be never. One thing for certain - people who say she's taking a six-month break or a year's break are deluding themselves. Joyner is leaving. And the PR Department are doing for her, exactly what they did for Letitia Dean when she left in 2006, after a slew of actors in major parts decamped during Kate Harwood's era: They've put out the meme that she's "taking a break." Well, I'd remind everyone that Joyner wants to be at home with her very small children (like Palmer), there's been no talk of any "working mum's contract" for her, and Dean's "break" was six years long.

Think about that.

Still, we're left with a show chocked full of characters who seem to be extremely unpopular with long-term and even some newer viewers - Derek, Whitney, the new and immensely hateful Kat, the steroid-enhanced half of the Goon Brothers - all characters who aren't working with viewers and who aren't served with any workable sort of scripts or storylines. We're left with an ever-increasing family of sleazeballs, the Brannings, whom we're supposed to accept as the main family on the Square, which include a plank of wood and a young sapling, both hired for their looks and not for their talent.

I don't know how Newman is going to sort the mess out that Kirkwood left. Speaking after the BSAs, Rita Simons and Scott Maslen stated that she wasn't going to change any of the scripts that had been blocked by Kirkwood until August; now the story is that she's not changing any of the storylines he's left intact for the rest of the year, when it would be well within her remit to do so, and when she can easily see that what Kirkwood did wasn't at all in the interest of the programme, but only in the interest of his ego.

I worry for Eastenders, because I remember when Brookside was outstripping Eastenders, Corrie and Emmerdale back in 1993, and ten years later, it was toast.

If nothing else, after all of Kirkwood's lies, Lorraine Newman, who is really a public servant paid by the public purse - i.e, us - owes the viewers of the programme she fronts more than a bit of honesty.

Michael Moon ... Psychopath

Steve John Shepherd identifies the character he plays as a psychopath. Before anyone dismisses this lightly, have a look at this film clip which you'll find here.

I know, I know, it's not from Eastenders, which means that one-track thinkers (or non-thinkers) like the ubiquitous monalisa20082 of Digital Spy infamy or lazy, arrogant assholes like J***** T***** AKA Shamelessness from Walford Web's kindergarten, will automatically turn it off, but watch it.

It's from a US cable news show shown in the wake of the Aurora massacre which occurred on Friday morning. The police profiler being interviewed is describing in great details and in terms even the basest idiot could understand exactly what a psychopath really is.

Raging against society because he isn't seen to be what he thinks he is. Manipulative. A con artist. Control-freak, who knows and meticulously plans his every move. Someone who is disconnected from society around him and who doesn't like anyone in or associated with his life. Someone who's got an attachment disorder regarding a parent (usually a parent of the same sex as the psychopath) which is imbedded in the person's personality before he's four years old. Incurable.


Ticks all the boxes for Michael Moon. It also ticks all the boxes for Archie Mitchell and Ben. And if you're thinking about the attachment disorder regarding a parent, think Michael and Eddie Moon. Think Archie Mitchell and his father Philip Mitchell I. Think Ben Mitchell and Phil.

Archie has gone, and Ben is going. Psychopathic characters have short shelf lives. I wonder if the clock is ticking on Michael Moon, because he certainly cannot stay any length of time. And he cannot be cured.

Tanya: The Yummy Mummy's a Secret Slut

I know all the fanboys bouncing in their prams at Walford Webb creche - especially Cack Jarr the Jark and Shamelessness, whose vocabulary hasn't progressed past four-letter words of the profane variety - absolutely adore Bouncy Tan to the point that they'd willingly allow her to wet-nurse them; but she's not the fragrant madam she pretends to be.

"Madam" is the operative word. Folks who hail from whence I came would call her jumped-up white trash or trailer trash scrubbed-up well. No matter how hard she or her satellites try, she's strictly tradesman's entrance. And I suppose "entrance" would be the operative word there as well.

Tanya is suffering from a terminal illness, and before widdle *Betty* at the creche stomps his pwetty widdle foot and says I'm being mean, it might interest him to know that her terminal illness is headuparseitis. Put succinctly, she's a flaming hypocrite and as amoral as the man from whom she cannot stay away.

There's a link between Tanya and Cora, and it isn't the link that exists between mother and daughter, although the traits Tanya shares with Cora are, indubitably, inherited. Cora, historically, has always put herself before her children - even before her dying husband. All well and good to say whimsically that she only loved one man in her life, her "Cross" to bear, but truth is, she spent the majority of his illness propping up a bar someplace, gambling and flirting. I can't believe there are people who hunger for Cora to take over the Vic. She is neither matriarch nor wise woman and certainly not landlady material. She's just another failed old lag who's latched onto the Brannings' rising star, courtesy of Bryan Kirkwood's god complex in his quest to remake Eastenders in his own shallow image.

Tanya, however, is something else.

When we first met Tanya, it didn't take us long to realise that she was the wife of Max Branning and the mother of his two children - but also the wife on whom Max had regularly cheated. Scratch the surface, and one found out that Tanya was Max's second wife, that Tanya was a teenaged hairdresser who had an affair with a married Max Branning. Once she found out he was married, she doubled-down her pursuit of him, becoming pregnant and holding out for him to abandon Wife Number One and his son, Bradley, to set up home with Tanya and their child.

So, in a word, Tanya was a homewrecker, a selfish teenaged slut who didn't give a rat's arse about breaking up a family and separating a child from his father, as long as Tanya got what she wanted - which was faux middle-class respectability. However, as is reiterated in Gone With the Wind (you really should read that book, Jark darling, you'd absolutely adore Scarlett O'Hara), like marries like, and Max is as much scrubbed-up white trash as Tanya is, except he doesn't proclaim or pretend to be otherwise.

Tanya, however, gets great pleasure wiggling her rounded bum around Walford, looking down her nose at the natives. She only befriends those people whom she reckons aspire to her social status. That meant Jane, but also Jane was involved in a trying enough marriage to a petty, little man, and craved companionship, herself. Jane would be useful to Tanya - useful because Tanya, like Cora, has an alcohol dependency.

Early in her adolescence, she learned from Cora's acquired behaviour that the best remedy for a stressful situation is a bottle of gin. It also helps make you happier when you want to celebrate and provides companionship when you're lonely, but you don't want to drink alone too much or people will start to talk, so you rope in your BFF and you polish off about five bottles of wine. Ne'mind if she's unaccustomed to that and pukes all over the place - you can clean that up in the morning.

Tanya is also an abysmal parent. She undermines Max. She's the sort of parent who wants to be thought of as a friend, so she plays the good cop to Max's bad one. When the kids do wrong, and Max instils discipline, Tanya goes behind his back and tells the offending party that everything's all right and that the old man is in the wrong.

Remember the infamous camcorder that revealed Stax? Remember how it was obtained? Lauren stole Max's credit card and bought it online. Max went ballistic, understandably, and punished Lauren; but then Mummy rounded on Max, told him how terrible he was, probably threatened to withold sex, and Max jumped back in line. He even apologised to Lauren and lifted her punishment. Recently, when Max confined Lauren to her room for bad behaviour and drunkennes, he returned to find that Tanya had allowed her to go out because "she needed some air, darlin."

Not only that, but both she and Max are incredibly selfish as parents. Neither of them put their children's needs or interests before their own. And when the chips are down, Tanya's quick to blame Max for everything.

When Tanya started cheating on Greg with Max, she proved beyond a doubt that she is no better morally than he is. She lost the fabled high ground, so all the fanboys who argued strenuously that Tanya hadn't cheated since marrying Max, lost that one. She showed all her mean commonness when she lay with Max in that rented flat and they laughed about "Bob the Builder" babysitting their child. Even worse, when - months later - they strolled through Walford on the anniversary of their first date, reminiscing and laughing about how they had to go to a place which served cheap drinks, because Max had a wife and child at home.

Har-dee-har-har.

However, when Tanya's infidelity was discovered, she allowed her spoiled-rotten children to believe that Max had seduced her, that Max had forced her into an affair. That wasn't the first time either.

In the wake of Stax, there was a classic confrontational scene with Stacey when, for a smidgeon of a minute, you thought Tanya was going to have an epiphany, when you thought that she was going to see that Stacey did exactly to her what she had done to Rachel ... but it never happened. Instead, she and Stacey agreed that the fault for Stax, just as the fault for Tanya's pursuit of Max as an eighteen year-old, was Max.

Always blame the man.

But always use the man ... because Tanya is a man's woman. She's the girl who was your best friend for life, until she got a boyfriend, then she didn't want to know you. Like Shirley with Heather, only prettier. Everything Tanya has ever achieved in her life, she's achieved through sleeping with a man.

Now, there's a name for a woman like that. Prostitute. Horizontale. Slut. Kept woman.

She married Max as a way out of a sink estate existence and left her harridan of a mother and drug-and-drink-addled sister behind. We didn't even know about a sister until she'd been one year into the programme - then it was an older sister; Kirkwood made her younger. Through Max, she got her own business, the trappings of the middle class and snobbishness. Shame she never learned proper grammar or good diction, however.

When she kicked Max out after the Stax reveal, instead of squaring her shoulders, comforting her children and concentrating on making her business a success, she prostituted herself to the local psycho in order to get him to help her murder Max - by burying him alive, no less - with an end plan to jetting off quickly and leaving Sean Slater to take the murder rap.

Later, she played the damsel in distress to garner Jack. The classic moment there was a scene when Tanya got Jack away from Ronnie's side because her torch wouldn't turn on. Turns out it needed batteries ... teeheehee. In fact, it was bonnie Jane who convinced Tanya, still married to Max, that she was entitled (there's that word again) to bed Jack, because ... well, because he was there and why not? (Probably because Jane fancied a pop at Jack but was too afraid of losing her status when Ian found out and kicked her arse into the street).

Through Jack, she was well on her way to gaining a villa in France, until Max intervened to stop her from breaking the law by taking his kids out of the country without his consent.

When she split from Max once more - because of Max's financial problems - she was gone three months before she had shacked up with gormless Greg, a successful builder with a big pay packet (the only big packet he had) and more money than common sense. She made him buy her a house on the Square - because Max had moved on and acquired a love interest, of whom she was jealous - and when she committed a huge crime by robbing Roxy blind, she enticed Greg to buy her the salon. Again. And she repaid him by sleeping with Max.

All of what occurred was just an elaborate kabuki dance in order to get Max and Tanya back together again, even the cancer cold was a part of the plan. The yo-yo couple, because Tanya cannot exist without a man by her side.

I would have loved her affair with Max to have ended by him returning to Vanessa and repudiating Tanya. Let's forget the abysmal cancer plot - that was only a device to get people to feel sympathy for the poor yummy mummy again. If Greg had rejected her, we could have watched her descend into alcoholism, because she's only a hop, skip and a jump away at this moment.

It's still not too late. We can have a drinking problem arise, possibly from discovering what Max was up to in Manchester - although, *Betty*, Jarkie  and others of their ilk are hankering for a storyline discovery retconned to reveal that Derek raped Tanya even before he met her and fathered Lauren. Gee, just four years ago, Lauren was rumoured to have been Jack's daughter. How long before we find that she actually came out of a whiskey bottle, fully grown?

Shortly, we're going to find out that Tanya will discover that Cora has another older daughter and Tanya has a half-sister. (Dear, God, the Brannings and their satellites are cancer!). I was hoping the discovery would have been that Cora had had an affair with Jim Branning and that Jim had fathered Tanya, who had unknowingly married and had kids by her brother.

That would appropriately add to the dysfunctionalism of the Brannings and the sensationalism that wraps itself around the otherwise fragrant Tanya like a big, bad smell.