"Beat me on the bottom with a Woman's Weekly": All things Victoria Wood

[Alexis Colby Carrington]

She's great. Do you know if that was her only appearance? It feels like she should have returned somehow.





She reprised the role in Julie Walters & Friends in a brilliant monologue specially written for her by Alan Bleasdale:

I don’t think we see Mary Brazzle again. Julie Walters has done so much, I wonder how much she remembers?

 

[Mel O'Drama]

I don’t think we see Mary Brazzle again.

Oh, that's a shame. But at least I can say I've seen her.

Julie Walters has done so much, I wonder how much she remembers?

Yes. She's been so busy, I can imagine she's forgotten an awful lot. But you never know, I suppose as everyone remembers their past in different ways, some with more detail.

I know she's said that Mrs Overall is her favourite of all the roles she's played, which is lovely. Her autobiography understandably skips over huge chunks of her work with Victoria, and I wonder if that's because she's forgotten them or she simply because it would have been too dry to list all these different shows and films one after another and she'd ticked that box.

 

[Alexis Colby Carrington]

Oh, that's a shame. But at least I can say I've seen her.





Yes. She's been so busy, I can imagine she's forgotten an awful lot. But you never know, I suppose as everyone remembers their past in different ways, some with more detail.

I know she's said that Mrs Overall is her favourite of all the roles she's played, which is lovely. Her autobiography understandably skips over huge chunks of her work with Victoria, and I wonder if that's because she's forgotten them or she simply because it would have been too dry to list all these different shows and films one after another and she'd ticked that box.

I agree with you. I know this is going off topic but see if you can find Julie’s role in A class act. She’s really good in that.

 

[Mel O'Drama]

see if you can find Julie’s role in A class act. She’s really good in that.

Thanks. This rewatch has made me hungry to watch more of Julie's material, so I'll add that one to the bucket list.

 

[Mel O'Drama]

Pat and Margaret​

(11th September 1994)​

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Who needs eight Vietnamese babies when you can have a lumpy old short order waitress for one week only… She’s horrendous. The perm. The funny voice. It’s real Tracy Ullman time.

Where to begin with this one. Vic’s first feature-length film since Happy Since I Met You, some thirteen years earlier.

Even without factoring in Victoria’s writing, the premise itself is a winner: glossy American soap star returns to her native England to promote a book only to find herself hoodwinked into a live television reunion with the frumpy younger sister she hasn’t seen since leaving twenty seven years earlier.

We first meet waitress Margaret finishing a shift at the motorway service station. She and her friends are off on a coach trip to watch a live television show being filmed. Everything about the introduction tells us what kind of character she is. She’s last ready because she’s waiting for chips to be cooked. And she keeps her work shoes on because “they’re comfy”.

Then we flash back to two little girls outside a council house. The younger of the two, aged perhaps three, sits on a tricycle with an ice cream, while a dark haired girl of perhaps seven or eight parades along the pavement with sunglasses and what appears to be her mother’s high heels, handbag and bead necklace. She takes the younger sister’s ice cream as she passes

Pat is everything Margaret is not. Julie Walters is terrific playing the hard as nails diva we first meet, giving a perfunctory autograph to two old women who are huge fans, while managing not to look them in the eye, speak to them or smile at them. As she tells her new assistant in the aftermath:

When you deal with me, Claire, think “icon”.

She then goes on to chew out the floor runner of the little television show in which she’s appearing, threatening to fire her for her impertinence, while reminding her:

I am the biggest soap star on American television.

On the surface, the film is about chalk and cheese. A collision of two worlds that simply can’t co-exist. At least, that’s how it begins. But it becomes so much more.


Great as Julie’s reactions are when Pat realises she’s been set up and outed as someone with humble beginnings and a family of whom she feels ashamed, it’s Victoria Wood who absolutely nails Margaret as she watches the show play out from the audience, smiling in anticipation of watching someone getting a nice surprise while not considering for a moment that the surprise is on her. When host Maeve mentions the Kirkby Preston Motorway Service Area Cafeteria, Margaret looks amazed and leans forward to look along the aisle and see one of her friends surprised. Everything about that moment is perfect. I love the way she goes to take her jacket and then as the runner leads her to the stage she turns and puts it on her chair.

As she sits on the sofa, photos of her childhood on the screen for all to see, Margaret’s shock turns to something else. It’s difficult to read, and very subtle, but there’s a pain behind her eyes that’s tangible.

(continued)​

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[Mel O'Drama]

Pat and Margaret​

(continued)​

Stone cold women hiding behind very different images are a theme in the film. Magic Moments presenter Maeve warmly greets Pat backstage before the show, asking her the secret to looking good, before quietly commenting to an associate how haggard Pat looks. It’s implied that she knows exactly how unwanted the reunion would be for Pat. After the show, Maeve gushes to Pat. When Pat asks if they can remove the reunion from the show, Maeve initially falls back on disingenuousness, pretending to misunderstand. Then when Pat clarifies Maeve gives her warmest smile as she plunges the knife in:

The nice thing about it bring live is we don’t have to worry about it. It’s over.

Anne Reid is predictably note-perfect as Maeve. And she’s far from the only one-time Corrie regular to appear. Philip Lowrie - by now an established part of Vic’s trusted reliable team - appears as the Magic Moments warm-up act. Julie Hesmondhalgh is a helper in a care home. And the wonderful Madge Hindle has a brief walk-on role as a fan of Pat’s soap opera, Glamor during the memorable scene in which Pat is refused credit by a hotel receptionist who evidently is not a fan of the series:

Can I trouble you for two forms of ID?

My face is my ID.

I’m afraid we don’t accept faces.

Along similar lines to Maeve is journalist Stella, who make a show of head tilting empathy in order to gain people’s confidence or information, but resorts to deception and dirty tricks to get her stor. Not least the note from a “fan” she passes on from Jim to Claire to Pat, which leads Pat and Margaret to their mother and a photo opportunity. Deborah Grant perfectly treads the line between warmth and ice as Stella.


Also fitting somewhat into this category is Margaret’s boyfriend Jim’s mother, played by the brilliant Thora Hird. Being a mother is her full-time job, and one she maintains by suffocating, bullying and controlling Jim. He’s there to serve her, and she’s not prepared to share him with Margaret, to the point that when Margaret phones her with a message for Jim, she lies to him about who was on the phone.

She openly talks to Claire about trying to introduce Jim to better women than Margaret, yet she repeatedly focusses on his illiteracy to Jim and anyone will listen, all the better to keep him in his place. It’s easy to surmise that she could have done more to get him help but chose not to in order that Jim didn’t gain knowledge and education, which might have meant him leaving the next. All of which leads to the great “raffia” line already mentioned by BF.

In fact, all of Thora’s scenes have terrifically sharp lines, usually coming from her no airs and graces black and white outlook. Such as her observation to pregnant Claire:

I knew a woman who ate luncheon meat all her nine months.

Was the baby all right?

Well, it was then. But it ended up selling insurance in Chorlton.

As Jim, Duncan Preston is captivating. He spends much of the time on the sidelines, but his journey from Lancashire to London (specifically “Mary-Lee-Bone”, as his mother reads it) in order to find Margaret is telling of his reliability and care. In many ways he’s the prototype for Stan, his character in dinnerladies.

Indeed, this film pulls the best of Victoria Wood to date and also has hints of things to come. Celia Imrie’s cheery-but-hopefully unorganised Claire resembles Pippa the HR manager who was of equal disposition and skill, and also played by Celia. She’s a bright spot here, always dashing to the loo and forgetful because of her pregnancy (written in because of Celia’s real-life pregnancy), and yet genuinely happy at the reunion and a speaker of truth. It’s Celia who insists to Pat that Margaret is a nice person, despite it potentially jeopardising her job.

Vic’s portrayal of Margaret foreshadows Bren, her dinnerladies character, whose earthy simplicity and outlook feel very similar. And clip-toned diva Pat strongly resembles Pam, the monstrous TV host also played by Julie Walters in Vic’s 1989 series.

The characters of Pat and Margaret could be viewed as analogous with Julie Stephens and Maureen, Walters and Wood’s characters from Talent and Nearly A Happy Ending. In many ways they’re the same characters, if Julie Stephens had got her break and become the celebrity she’d dreamt of being.

(continued)​

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[Mel O'Drama]

Pat and Margaret




(continued)​

Pam’s journey is in many ways the opposite to that of other ruthless women in the film. Despite her initial rejection of Margaret, Pat’s younger sister simply continues being who she is. She speaks from the heart, and with them forced to spend time together - at first for the cameras, and then because of Pat asking Margaret to help her track down their long-absent mother out of fear that the gutter press will find her first, Pat finds herself connecting regardless. In the confinement of a car during a motorway journey, Margaret shares some of herself while Pat tries to remain detached:

I was ‘avin’ a baby once. It never went the full… Funny year. Gary died in the March. An’ then I lost ‘er in the… well, it was about now.

Were you married, then?

Yeah. ‘E ‘ad an accident at work. I was gonna get compensation. There was some reason why I didn’t.

With credit to both writing and performances, Pat’s façade slowly dropping is incredibly well done. As she tries to be incognito, the makeup drops out, the clothes become simpler (she’s stuck wearing a shell suit, getting asked to leave a hotel for not meeting the dress code). The RP slowly gives way to something approaching a Lancashire accent. It feels very truthful for someone returning to the place they grew up. Perhaps the turning point comes when the women revisit the childhood home we briefly saw in the opening flashback, now boarded up and in the cold light of day:

Bloody hell. You shove it all away. Move on, grow up, cut your hair. An’ it’s all there waiting, isn’t it? Waiting to be dealt with.

I don’t really know what you mean.

With Pat’s credit cards and belongings left in London by forgetful Claire, she is forced to go to Margaret’s flat and things get even more real with some of Vic’s best dialogue:

This is me. This is where I live. It’s not nice. An’ I know I spent all yesterday sayin’ I wasn’t jealous an’ I was just glad to see ya, an’ I was happy livin’ the way I do. But I’m not. I don’t want to be like this. I want what you’ve got.

Then work for it. You’ve no idea what I had to do to get where I am now. Do something.

What can I do? I can’t do anythin’. I wanted a house an’ a husband an’ a baby. Well I told you what… I’m not clever… I don’t know how to earn any more money… I can’t buy a house. I’d ‘ve loved a little house. Not a room where they come in when you’re not ‘ere an’ look in your things. You had somethin’. You should’ve helped me. Why did you leave me?

That is not what happened.

It is what happened. You went. I was eleven. She got done again.

Suspended sentence.

No. The real thing. It wasn’t for long but she never really got it together after that. I was just sort’ve fostered about. It wasn’t that bad, but I just used to think you might turn up. You know: sports car; trouser suits. Kid rubbish.

Later in the evening, something’s changed again. They’re not quite sisters, but there’s now an ease between them. And a freedom to be completely honest:

Pat, why didn’t you take me with ya? I were right tall. I could’ve passed for fourteen.

Did she say I ran away? She chucked me out. I was pregnant.

Did you have it?

Yeah. I did. Took bloody hours… Never again.

You could’ve come back after.

I did. Hobbled back straight after. All soggy bra. Sanitary towel. No-one there. She was inside, I s’pose. You and me couldn’t ‘ve lived together. Ten an’ fifteen.

Who’s was it? The baby?

D’you remember my Saturday job at that cafe, The Swiss Cottage, run by the only homosexual in North East Lancashire? It was the boy who delivered the Pepsis I got pregnant with. We only did it once. He had a condom. Couldn’t get it on. Thought that bit at the end ‘ad to go on as well. Come on. I’m buyin’ you dinner.

And this marks THE moment where Pat, for the first time, not only acknowledges her past but embraces it. She takes Margaret to The Swiss Cottage, stuck in time and still owned by the same homosexual

Don’t tell me. A bacon sandwich, doughnut an’ a Pepsi float.

Pay ya back Sat’dee.

The scene in which Pat, Margaret and Claire enjoy a fry-up with Pete is where the ice is well and truly broken. Pat even passingly refers to her sister as “our Margaret”. Given where they were at the beginning seems convenient - almost corny and contrived - for the characters to achieve this breakthrough. But with this writing, and with these performances, its truly heartwarming because it feels as though it’s been earned. There’s no syrup or saccharine. Just a good, honest nostalgic natter. And we’ve all been there.

(continued)​

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[Mel O'Drama]

Pat and Margaret​

(continued)​

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The new bond between the two paves the way for their inevitable confrontation with their mother, thanks to wily Stella’s note:

Bit late for Mother’s Day, aren’t you?

Actually we were hoping to visit your grave but we’re a bit early… You recognise Margaret?

Can’t miss ‘her. What d’you do?

I work on the motorway in the cafeteria.

Your father weren’t much cop at anythin’ either.

Shirley Stelfox seems to have made a career out of playing hard-faced rough old tarts. I know her best as con-artist Madge on Brookside and Rose on Keeping Up Appearances. And of course there’s the sex worker in Personal Services. Her portrayal of Vera is in much the same mould. A prostitute who openly admits she wasn’t that good because she enjoyed the sex but didn’t care for the talking. Meeting her suddenly explains a lot about the dynamics we’ve seen so far - from the pain in Margaret’s eyes to Pat’s brutal treatment of others to keep her position. It’s a lightbulb moment for Pat as well, as she suggests Vera owes Margaret:

You could’ve helped her yourself but you’re like me.

That’s right. I’m like you. I never had a father. I’m assuming her father wasn’t my father. I just had you. Brought up the Vera way. What could I know? Housework stinks an’ black bras don’t show the dirt. What else? Don’t be warm. Don’t be kind. Look after number one. Stuff any other bugger who does different. You made me, you stupid cow. An’ you ballsed up.

You wanna be warm? You wanna be kind? Fine.You end up slopping gravy for eighty quid a week.

Naturally, the situation is a setup. Vera has already been paid by Stella who gets her story. But by this time things are on a different footing. Pat says the son she gave away is a physiotherapist in Canada, and Margaret points out to Stella that Pat’s come from humble beginnings and made something of herself, so why not paint her in a sympathetic light. Margaret's almost childlike disbelief at Stella duplicity is incredibly engaging, and it's believable that Vera would take some notice, in her own way .

Vera is honest to the end

Mum, did y’ever love us.

I don’t think so. I don’t think I knew what love was till I bred me first Afghan.

It’s a terrific line that says so much in an economical way. In a different world we could have watched the story from Vera’s perspective and learnt much about her, but the layers remain hidden, or at least unexplored fully. And the nuance is appreciated.

Vera ends up jetting off with Pat in the name of giving Stella her happy ending. Margaret convinces Jim to stand up to his mother, leading to the hilarious revelation that Jim has had a sex life on her bed.

Not on the eiderdown!

Given Vera’s earlier derogatory remark about slopping gravy, it’s a lovely touch that the most romantic line in the film comes as Jim accepts Margaret’s offer for them to move in together:

I’ve loved you since the first minute you give me extra gravy.

Pat and Margaret part as sisters and friends, with Pat buying The Swiss Cottage from the retiring Pete and handing the keys to Margaret.


Ultimately, what started as an odd couple reunion is a film about coming home, finding your past, finding your truth and finding yourself. It’s right up there with the best of British comedy drama films.

 

[Barbara Fan]

Lovely synopsis @Mel O'Drama - thank you xx

My 2 favourite lines are

Not on the Eiderdown

and You didnt have dyslexia in those days, you were sat at back with raffia!!

I always think that Thora Hird steals the show, she did in dinnerladies

I really enjoyed Pat and Margaret and i think Ane Reid was spot on as a Cilla type Surprise surprise host

I didnt like the ending though with Pat and Shirley Stelfox - but thats my only complaint. Lovely writing and it was a surprise to see Hayley Cropper looking like Hayley Cropper!! I like spotting ex corrie cast in her dramas! x

 

[Mel O'Drama]

Lovely synopsis @Mel O'Drama - thank you xx

Oh, it's my pleasure BF.

My 2 favourite lines are

Not on the Eiderdown

and You didnt have dyslexia in those days, you were sat at back with raffia!!

They're great. Terrific writing and perfectly delivered.

I always think that Thora Hird steals the show, she did in dinnerladies

Oh yes. She's great. She was brilliant in Last Of The Summer Wine as well and never failed to make me laugh.

didnt like the ending though with Pat and Shirley Stelfox - but thats my only complaint.

I felt like that when I watched last night, but thinking about it today it's sitting better with me. I think it could be read as hopeful. Maybe Pat will bring out a softer side in her mother the same way Margaret did with her. I could almost imagine a sequel that focusses on the mother/daughter relationship.

I like spotting ex corrie cast in her dramas! x

Same here. And there's certainly no shortage of them!!

 

[Mel O'Drama]

Live In Your Own Home

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(25th December 1994)​

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At least that’s the date it was first shown on telly. It was released on video on 31st December 1994, and presumably shot several months before that.

The blurb on the back of my DVD copy says it has appearances from Julie Walters and Duncan Preston, but actually I just caught a brief glimpse of Julie in the audience, rocking with laughter. And I didn’t see Duncan at all.

No matter, it’s a great set from Vic. At 50 minutes it feels very much like the Beeb’s equivalent of An Audience With… About half the length of a full set, but a brilliant little time capsule of Vic’s talents.

The material feels fresh, and I love the way she makes stories about giving birth and coping with a baby not only hilarious but also accessible even to someone who has no experience of either (that would be me). Like the antenatal classes:

They pushed the little rubber dolly through the balaclava helmet and they said “That’s basically what labour’s like”… When I came to do it I remember thinking “well, it’s not that simple”. You know, I remember looking down at myself an’ thinking “No, there’s a design fault here. This is nothin’ like a balaclava”. There’s no ribbing for one thing.

Some stuff could easily fall into the “too much information” category (haemorrhoids, anyone) but I love that there are no sacred cows in the material Vic uses. This is the concert where she comments that one of her children looks like something out of the Beano, which apparently scarred the child when they watched the concert some years later.

I watched this back-to-back with another concert so I may be getting messed up, but I think it was this one that also had a hilarious impression of Mia Farrow picking out her children in the style of someone choosing letters on Countdown.

Some great new characters make their debut appearance (or at least, this is the first time I’ve seen them in this chronology). There’s Madeleine the hairdresser. And there’s Madge and her low impact Fattitude class, which is a masterclass in comedy technical skills. Vic manages to deliver lines while running through a full energetic workout. Not once does she miss a step. Not once does she miss a line. I can imagine it would have taken a lot of time to work out the choreography along with the lines. And both are really funny. There’s a little self-deprecation from Vic about her size, but again, this is just her laying it on the line.

The songs are great. I especially loved the ballad, Go With It, which is continued proof that it’s not just all about the laugh out loud songs. Vic can write poignant, heartfelt lyrics with the best of them:

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[Barbara Fan]

Ive actually got this DVD as part of VW Collection - but i dont know if i have ever watched it, or of i have i have forgotten it
Will dust it off at the weekend and report back to you @Mel O'Drama x

 

[Mel O'Drama]

Ive actually got this DVD as part of VW Collection - but i dont know if i have ever watched it, or of i have i have forgotten it
Will dust it off at the weekend and report back to you @Mel O'Drama x

Oh - it's definitely worth watching at least once, BF. She's so good live!!

Hope you enjoy it. I'm sure you will.

 

[Alexis Colby Carrington]

Madeline the hairdresser is great!

 

[Mel O'Drama]

Madeline the hairdresser is great!

She really is.

If you go muddling with modelling you'll be very middling our Madeline.​

 

[Mel O'Drama]

Victoria Wood Live



(1996)

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Vic had already broken box office records at the Royal Albert Hall by selling out fifteen nights in the one venue in 1993. She achieved the Hall’s record for the most shows in a run by any comedian and any other female performer. But on top of this, she came back and did the same all over again with another fifteen nights three years later.

While the 1993 set doesn’t appear to be easily available to watch, I was very struck by how much new material this concert has compared with her Sold Out tour from just five years earlier (and indeed, her shorter live performances such as Live In Your Own Home). There’s very little repetition apart from the very occasional line. Certain themes are familiar, because that’s where Vic’s strength lies. It’s observations about Britishness; bad service; sex; families, and so on.

The energy she keeps up for this 95 minute set is very impressive. It’s all so seamless and just flows from one theme to another. With the occasional song thrown in for good measure.

While not in any big way, there’s a sense that Vic has developed more edge as she’s grown in confidence and into middle age. It feels like she’s got more to say and she’s less bothered about how that will be perceived. This is perhaps summed up by one song in particular, which I’ll get to in a moment.

The monologues are terrific. The “spending Christmas with someone else’s family” one towards the end of the show is especially memorable.

The songs are very strong this time round. There are perhaps five or six throughout, but two in particular have become standout songs for me: both in the second act, and both very funny indeed.

First there’s Pam, which is an ode to frigidity. Pam herself feels very much like a musical version of Kitty from As Seen On TV. She’s very British and very blunt. She makes Freda’s Barry seem positively rampant, while at the same time getting far more action than he did.

She tries marriage, lesbianism and a romance at sea, but none of them do anything for her. Hubby is simply refused (“Harold dear, now do get dressed. I’ve seen one in a book and I was not impressed); her lesbian roommate has her way with Pam, which only results in Pam’s specs getting bent (“I’d rather have a coffee and a Wagon Wheel”, she decides afterwards); while Billy, her nautical romance doesn’t do it for her either (“he got stuck in, he really tried. But I only felt a tremor down my left hand side”).

The lyrics are hilarious and oh so Victoria Wood, with references to Ovaltine, Custard Creams, tea, rainhoods, rum and Babycham, Abergele and even Alan Bennett.

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[Mel O'Drama]

Victoria Wood Live​

(continued)
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The second song is perhaps Vic’s most controversial: Alternative Tango. It’s also, arguably her finest moment in audience manipulation. The entire structure of the song is designed to first shock in order for the following comedy to have its full impact to the relieved audience.

She begins by saying that she’d seen a list of insults people weren’t allowed to say in the workplace anymore, which included one she liked to use, so she’d written a song trying to say it another way.

The song begins with words she never wanted to say or was never keen on. Now this is the trickiest part of the song, because the opening lines include two racial epithets. I found it a little awkward to get past, and I can imagine some wouldn’t get beyond it at all. The very enthusiastic audience doesn’t respond at all, and there follows a few moments of what would be stunned silence if Vic wasn’t singing.

It’s a very bold move on her part. I’m sure she would have not only known how the audience would react, but actually counted on it. She then gets to the crux of the song:

But there’s a term I’m rather fond of. And to use it I do hanker…

This gets a huge bellow of laughter from the audience, not only anticipating the upcoming rhyming word, but also hugely relieved that it’s more socially acceptable than the words used at the beginning.

She could have built up to using the word in question so that it was the one that caused shock. But it becomes far funnier if the audience is a little nervous and then let off the hook.

But there’s also a message in there about censorship. Vic feels language is important, but she also feels she doesn’t need a list to tell her what is and is not acceptable. In her view, she can say what she likes and take the consequences. And the point of her song is: when there are words that are genuinely offensive and which she doesn’t like (but chooses not to censor) where’s the harm in saying “w*nker” every once in a while. Where will it end?

Naturally, she comes up with creative and hilarious ways to say the same word without saying it, with lines like:

He prefers to jiggle solo. He prefers his own last Rolo to a bag of pick ’n’ mix.

Or…

His scrotum isn’t used to strangers. There are no condoms on his shelf. When his tones caress and soften - when he asks “D’you come here often?” - he is talking to himself.

It’s one of her funniest songs yet, as evidenced by how often Vic has to vamp on the piano, waiting for laughter from one line to die down before singing the next. But underneath it is a very real anger at how arbitrary censorship could impact the way she communicates:

Political correctness has taken hold just like a canker. I would like to nick a tanker and run down the stupid w*nker who has put it out of bounds.

It comes across that the message is one in which Victoria believes, and which she feels could be genuinely troublesome.

It seems, she was right to feel that way. The concert is currently available on iPlayer, having been shown on TV over Christmas but the BBC have taken it upon themselves to remove the song. Yes - a song condemning censorship has been censored. Small wonder Vic has said that she felt the BBC didn’t trust her. It’s an insult to a great talent.

Nevertheless, the audience at the Royal Albert Hall got it. They went along for the ride and she looked like she had enormous fun taking them on that journey, playing it for all she’s worth.

 

[Mel O'Drama]

For anyone with iPlayer, a Celebrity Mastermind with Vic as one of the specialist subjects is available to watch until Wednesday.

I watched it last night and did pretty well at answering the questions with a lot of it fresh in my mind.

Mind you, I don't think most of the questions are particularly difficult for anyone with even a passing interest in the subject. The most challenging thing for me is trying to work out who the "Celebrities" are.

 

[Barbara Fan]

I watched a fair bit of As seen on TV last night, a lot at fwd - to get to the scenes i wanted to see but was nice to see "Ernie Bishop" from Corrie fame and really enjoved Patricia Routledge as Kitty - ooh that make up was scary!

and loved "Is it on the trolley? Nice to see Maureen Lipman showing how good she is and and almost too good for Corrie and a wee flash of Scotlands own Molly Weir (Flash cleans baths without scratching - is what i remember her for!)

 

[Mel O'Drama]

nice to see "Ernie Bishop" from Corrie fame

Yes indeed. Panicking because his wife's lover had used his garden hose.

Molly Weir (Flash cleans baths without scratching - is what i remember her for!)

She'll always be Hazel The McWitch to me: