Gadzooks, a Shakespearean actor on the Street

Oh gawd, there was Angela 'Arris still in the pokey, still wearing no make-up, still blubbing and moping. Would she be reprieved? Would we?

The end looked to be in sight on Tuesday night when her solicitor turned up to announce that the murder charge would be dropped. That was a good sign. Angela could pack up son Craig - who is no more interesting now he's a Goth, just poutier - and they could leave the cobbles for good.

And good riddance to bad 'Arrises, we would have said round ours. But no, she'll be locked up for six to eight years for perverting the cause of justice, apparently.

I happen to think it's a perversion of justice making us sit through another scene involving any of the 'Arrises, but if that end is not yet in sight, there has been a reprieve of another sort.

Just what sort will be played out over the next weeks now that Mel Hutchwright, more recently familiar as Sir Ian McKellen's Gandalf, has turned up on the street as a quite obvious fraudster of an author.

He was formerly famous as the writer of a work called Hard Grinding, the title of which is obviously the work of a very naughty mind in Coro's script-writing department.

A writer on the street wears - what else? - a brown corduroy jacket and speaks like (another little joke) a bad Shakespearean actor.

That is a nice touch, to have a great Shakespearean actor say to Emily: "Emily, beautify yourself and escort me to the pub. I require a muse."

And Mel, like Gandalf, has been given some mystic nonsense to spout: "We have a duty to be free."

Sir Ian is having such a good time playing Hutchwright that nobody could begrudge him throwing himself - albeit languidly - into a role which promises to become a classic Coro caricature.

Kev, as Hutchwright insists on calling Ken, is on to him. Mel spins a story of deliciously obvious mendacity about how he said to Spielberg: "The foundation of the novel is Lancashire. I don't intend to set it in Baltimore. It would be like ET being from Milton Keynes rather than outer space. I don't care what he's offering. It's Lancashire or naught."

The book club, which is made up of Betty, Emily, Blanche, Rita and Norris, swooned and applauded. Sour old Kev, or Ken, said "I take it he took the naught option then."

The green-eyed monster has Ken firmly in its fangs. As for Norris, he appears to be in the early stages of what looks to be love. Well, you've always wondered, haven't you?

Can we actually stomach the sight of Norris with an infatuation? The fawning, the showing-off, the attempts to prove that he's an intellectual?

Oh, I think so. The whole set-up promises to provide some much-needed Coro eccentricity. And for that we can just about put up with a bit more wailing and moping from the 'Arrises.