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Spoilers may exist in this article, so be warned

I thought, as I sat down to write this week’s Corriespondence, that I may take inspiration from Stella and Karl, and write the whole thing in laboured, cheesy cliches.

It would be sort of postmodern; I’d reference their cliches through the use of my own, and we’d all laugh. Then I realised that sounded a bit confusing, so I thought I’d just moan about them a lot and occasionally use caps to demonstrate my anger instead. Ok with you? Right, let’s go.

“Grab life while you can!” said Stella.

“You have made me the happiest man alive!” said Karl.

“Remember when we moved in to our first flat and we ate fish and chips by candlelight and did something else that was a massive cliche?” or something along those lines, said Karl.

Then there’s the way the pair of them come up with ideas. GAHHHH. The only thing I can compare the facial expressions to is Joey Tribbiani’s ‘smell the fart’ acting in Friends, though this is less authentic; it makes Joey look like Brando.

I’ve tried, God I’ve tried. But as a Northerner who writes about Corrie for a living, and has therefore sat through every single one of Stella’s fake Manchester vowels, I surely don’t deserve this.

Come on Corrie, Stella and Karl as lead characters? You’re better than this, you’re so much better than this.

And now I’ve got that off my chest - only one cap too, look at that! - let’s move on to this week’s Corrie lessons.

Sally Webster wants a bit of panto action this year

“You’re very close to David,” whispered Sal to Nick. “Especially where his wife’s concerned...” And with that, she raised an evil eyebrow and sidled off to stir her cauldron. Or pick up a Pinot and some dishwasher tablets from the corner shop, one or the other.

But the Nick/ David storyline is obviously reaching a crescendo, if scenes like this one and the ‘this’ll come back to haunt you’ conversation where David told Nick and Kylie he couldn’t ask for a ‘better brother or a better wife’ are anything to go by. Which they are of course, because that’s the rule of soaps.

But aside from the whole ‘sleeping with his wife’ business, is Nick actually a good brother/ human anyway? I give you one piece of evidence: the speed with which Nick moved when he knew David was unconscious on the ground. Did he think ‘get the information on the way, just get to the park’? Did he heck.

Instead he had a good meander, borrowing some ‘I am thinking about this’ expressions from Karl/ Joey Tribbiani before heading on his way at a fairly average pace.

Just as David Platt’s reaching his psycho best when he (inevitably) finds out about Kylie and Nick, I’d like Sally Webster to nip over, do her panto villian face, and whisper in his ear ‘He didn’t even rush when you had your fit, David’.

Roy’s dad is called ‘Singen’

Pronounced like ‘Singen your ear with the hair straighteners’, rather than ‘Singen in the Rain’. But, bizarrely, spelled 'St John' - like the ambulance.

Kirk helps teenagers with their homework

SAVE OUR YOUTH FROM THIS TERRIBLE DANGER.

Sylvia wants her outfit to say ‘free, happy and moderately affluent’

Not since Sally sent Rosie to the private school with the weird hats have we seen such upwardly mobile hilarity.

I love Roy’s mum; I love her distrust of the shopping channel and I love her responding to Rita’s lament about the pub being sold with a muttered: “You’ll have to find somewhere else to spend your afternoons.”

And I appeal to Corrie to keep Sylvia for as long as possible, and give her plenty of scenes with the equally brilliant Gloria. Probably better to focus on the female plotlines anyway, what with the rewrites currently going on for Kevin (ill dad in Germany) and Ken (playing a lot of Scrabble).

Owen doesn’t seem so evil when he’s aiming his crowbar at someone as annoying as Karl

There are many reasons why I think Owen Armstrong is one of the best characters in Corrie, but the main one is that one minute I can really think he’s such a baddy, and the next, I totally think ‘Poor Owen! He loves his daughters! He didn’t MEAN to do it!’*

You’re remembering what a sucker I was with Lewis now, aren’t you?

Basically, Owen has the skill to make his bad deeds somehow still justifiable and human - like Becky did, and Lewis, and Kylie - and he has a weakness; his girls. Which means that when (also inevitably) Gary snogs Tina, he’d better hope that crowbar has been bent out of shape by its attempts on Karl’s head, or it’ll be coming straight for him.

And obviously when this has happened, Gary is in hospital and more traumatised than he was after he went to actual war, I will still be going ‘Oh Owen didn’t mean it though, he just loves his daughters...’

*Obviously I do not tolerate violence, towards Karl or any other fictional characters.

Tweet me @cgcorcoran to tell me your thoughts on this week’s Corrie!