Ray Feels Peculiar

‘PETER Barlow has a larger capacity for self-deception than Jeffery Archer himself – and, like Archer, it’s only a matter of time before his incredible arrogance causes his downfall.

‘Eeny, meany, miny, mo…’

Peter and Shelly were due to get married this week – in spite of the small fact that Peter is actually already married to Lucy. Peter didn’t seem to think this was a problem though, although Shelly’s mum Bev did. How unreasonable!

On the eve of the wedding, Ciaran let slip to her that Peter had been seeing another woman. Bev told Shelly who then told Peter that she never wanted to see him again.

But in Soapland, ‘never’ usually constitutes about an episode and, true to form, weasel Peter managed to turn things round so that he actually blamed Shelly.

‘You’re throwing away your only chance at happiness,’ he told her. ‘How could you do it to us?’ Amazingly, Shelly agreed to marry Peter and happily trotted off down the aisle looking like a pig in a duvet.

And of course as luck – or the scriptwriters – would have it – who should be in the registry office next door at the very same time but Lucy: registering her (and Peter’s) son’s birth.

Producers had shot three different endings to the wedding and in the end went for the one that drags the storyline out the longest. Quelle surprise!

In the end, Shelly and Peter got married without a hitch, in spite of Tracy threatening to speak up at the ‘does anyone know any lawful impediment?’ bit.

Tracy had more mischief to make though, when she set out to win her one penny bet with Bev that she could seduce Roy. Hayley was away tending to a sick relative so Tracy offered to ‘look after’ Roy at the wedding.

Which is a bit like putting Ozzie Osborne in charge of a bat sanctuary.

When Tracy realised that Roy wasn’t going to crack, she drugged his drink with the date-rape drug she found at Shelly’s hen night. ‘I – I feel a bit peculiar,’ Roy stuttered while unloosening his tie and turning red. Tracy offered to take him home.

‘You’re a regular angel,’ taxi driver Mick told Tracy as she carried Roy into her house. The sort of ‘angel’ you find down Stringfellow’s Cabaret of Angels perhaps.

Mercifully we were spared any bedroom scenes and the next episode opened with poor Roy stuffing his pants into his pocket and running out. Tracy was sporting her best smirk face as she claimed her penny from Bev.

But when Ken found out, he demanded that the gurning monster tell Roy nothing happened or he’d throw her out. ‘He’s a broken man,’ shouted Ken. Not as much of a broken man as Hayley’s going to be when she finds out though.

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Posted: 23rd, July 2003 | In: Strange But True Comment | TrackBack | Permalink