Sex On The Street

[For overseas readers: no major storylines revealed in this piece but if in doubt, skip this post].

In Coronation Street, Liz MacDonald, who is currently forced to stay in son Steve's flat, has managed to find a toyboy with a semi. We know this detail because he's always walking round Steve's flat in very tight Y-Fronts.
Unfortunately, this won't solve Liz's housing problems and there's certainly no spare room in what he calls his 'grundies'.
"Shouldn't you be at school?" asked Steve.
"We've got a Reading Week", replied Randy Andy.
The only thing young Andy is reading is Liz's palm, or possibly her stretch marks.

I suspect this storyline to cause some moral outrage (though not as much as if Ken Barlow were shagging a Sixth Form boy). But not because of the inter-generational intercourse.
Something far worse. Liz keeps giving young Andy a drag on her post-coital cigarettes. And since they're at it all day - in the bedroom, in the shower, swinging from the Argos light fitting - they must both be on at least 20 a day, even if Liz smokes only after sex.
Well, I say 'smokes after sex' but if the insatiable schoolboy doesn't slow down she's going to spontaneously combust and Steve will come home to find a powdery, withered husk on the sofa.
Then again, would he notice any difference?

If that old slapper Liz makes an unlikely Mrs Robinson (she's more Lily Savage), then even more incredible is Gail's long history as a man-magnet.
The only possible explanation is that Gail's features remind some men of their first love - their pet hamster.
I could be wrong. It may be that straight men all over Britain fantasise about her and inadvertently cry 'Gail!' in moments of passion. But somehow I doubt it.

Her latest admirer, the Scottish foot-fiddler (or chiropracter), is evidently expected to be regarded by female viewers as 'sex-on-a-stick', as one character called him. I find that equally baffling. He looks to me like someone who would re-arrange your face with a Stanley knife behind a Glasgow tenement block for no better reason than that there was nothing on the telly. If Gail has fallen for another psycho he may do exactly that to her. But at least that would save her a fortune on plastic surgery.
Gail's teenage son David finds the foot-fiddler about as appealing as a veruka. When Gail brought him home after a romantic dinner, the following conversation ensued:
Gail: Coffee?
David: Is that 'coffee' as in 'sex'?
Gail: Go upstairs!
David: Me or him?
A wonderfully spare and entertaining piece of dialogue from Debbie Oates, with far more edge to it then you get in most family sitcoms.
But we expect no less from The Street.