There’s something crazy about Mary

CHANNEL HOPPING: MISERY is usually more at home in the downbeat back streets of Walford than on the jolly cobbles of Weatherfield but Corrie’s scary Mary had soap’s biggest rivals singing from the same hymn sheet when she did her Kathy Bates bit on Norris.

The champion puzzlers arrived in Bronte country for a week in the sticks with only their prize-winning motorhome and a bumper hamper of guff from the Kabin to keep the pair amused. But as the wordsearches were whittled down and the sudokus simplified, there were cross words when Mary dropped a few clues about wanting to be two-down in the bedroom at their cosy moorland cottage.

The wary newsagent refused to fill in the blanks and kept as safe a distance as he could. But it soon became clear that, just like Annie in Stephen King’s classic tale, Mary, initially no more than a kind-if-odd sort with a happy-go-lucky attitude, was actually insane. Where Weatherfield crimper Natasha is a definite border-line bunny-boiler, there is certainly no maybe about Mary.

And as for Norris, the news wasn’t good as the penny dropped. Mary stuffed the engine on the motorhome then pulled the phone socket from the wall, merely confirming her reluctance to fly the cukoo’s nest — and meant the pair were marooned in what now doubled as a padded cell, for a little while longer.

Back in Weatherfield, meanwhile, depressed Tina told Graeme she didn’t want to live and David put the wind up Gary’s mum and dad by spilling the beans on their AWOL soldier Gary. For once, what seemed like another load of barracks from weasel-like Platt, turned out to be true.


NOT that Albert Square let the side down in the unhappy-chappy department. Aside from barmaid Shirley’s alarming and out-of-the-blue “I lost my little boy nine years ago this week” outburst, the flashing blue lights of an ambulance arrived to cart off a badly beaten Christian. Dot weighed in with another “God will judge, Chapter 13, verse-four” number and publicly-outed gay Syed went into hiding. Pass the Prozac.


Soap roar: It’s a pity “TV Burp” has finished for the season. Harry Hill would have had a field day when “Ian Beale’s knickerbocker glory” appeared on the café’s blackboard just as Phil quizzed Ben about his sexuality.


Soap bore: Fat Boy’s Sid James laugh is still doing the rounds in “EastEnders” but the Pat-Peggy fancyman saga is a right carry-on.