These were the words of my favourite TV critic, the Mirror's Jim Shelley, on Friday's wedding episode. "Becky just ruined it - not the wedding, the whole episode." And I have to say, I agree with him. Much as I love Katherine Kelly and the character she plays, the wedding episodes were so over the top they were ludicrous, and Becky turned in one fell swoop from being a flawed character who I could relate to, to being grotesque. "The wedding was a horrible combination of being totally implausible... at the same time as being desperately predictable," according to Shelley, and he points out something that I felt was glaringly obvious - that Becky resisted having a hen night because she didn't want to ruin her big day, and then got so hammered she ruined it anyway. I know that true love is never supposed to run smooth in these things, but good grief.

Not everyone agrees with me and Jim Shelley, of course. Our Tvor certainly doesn't, and regular Corrieblog commenter Peter emailed me (comments on Corrieblog not working at present) to say: This was Corrie in tip top form. Both episodes were superb. Entertaining from start to finish, we kind of followed Becky on an emotional journey before she even made it to the registry office. Katherine Kelly portrays Becky where it is simply impossible not to like her. Her initial link up with the Croppers is paying dividends now as her scenes with Hayley today were very touching and i loved how when Roy gave her away he kept the basket and shopping bag tightly gripped! I cannot wait to see her reaction when she discoveres she never actually got to say "I do!"

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I know this is going to seem trivial in the face of a global recession, climate change and whether Becky will choose Steve, Jason or neither - but Eileen's handbag has been irritating me for months. Years, even.

It's brown and black and pretty shapeless, and even though she carries it everywhere it never looks like there's anything in it. It looks totally flat and weightless. Watch tonight's episode and see for yourself! And contrast it with Julie Carp's beautiful piece of hand luggage, the glorious yellow of which makes a bold colour statement with her fuschia coat.

So please, someone, get Eileen a new bag. It's mothers' day soon, so there's a lovely gift idea for Jason and Todd.

It's been a while since I last had a Monday moan - in public at least. But I was just reading that the British Heart Foundation has complained that most people don't know the symptoms of a heart attack and may delay getting help because they don't realise they're having one. Fair enough, that's important to know. But what I object to is when Coronation Street gets dragged in as being guilty of misleading people. "I was really surprised to find out I'd had a heart attack because they always show people on television shows like Coronation Street keeling over," a heart patient is quoted as saying.

The most recent person to have a heart attack on Corrie was Jerry Morton. Michael Starke, who plays him, has said that there were medical people on set throughout filming to make sure the scenes were played authentically. Jerry didn't just "keel over," but actually went to the pub for a pint and tried to carry on as usual, and only got medical help when his friends really insisted. This seems to me exactly the kind of realistic picture the BHF want us to know about, and shows that the programme's makers take their responsibilities very seriously. And, after all, it's meant to be entertainment, not a public service broadcast.

Remember back in the days when Paul Connor was still alive? He was the hard, ruthless one and little brother Liam was the gentler, funnier, more moral Connor brother. It was a good contrast, and Liam's character was developing nicely.

Unfortunately, since then, Liam has been defined solely in terms of his relationship with women. First there was Leanne, who was always one step ahead of him because she was witty and independent. His moral sense and family loyalty meant that he couldn't continue with that relationship once her professional connection to his brother was discovered.

Then along came Maria and Carla. They seem to be two completely different personalities, but they're actually the same personality in reverse. Maria is fluffy on the outside and pretty ruthless inside, while Carla hides her softness inside a hard shell. But they both wanted Liam, and from then on the poor man just became a love puppet, tugged from one side to the next with apparently no will of his own.

I know we have to take what the tabloids say with a pinch of salt, but the Daily Star are predicting a sizzling summer of hot sex on Coronation Street. It's sweet how they get excited about this sort of thing when we know that the raciest thing we'll see is someone's hair getting a bit ruffled.

But one of their predictions which disturbed me was that they say Becky Grainger will have a "sordid" (don't you love that word?) one-night-stand with Steve McDonald, and he'll have his work cut out trying to stop Michelle from finding out.

Add this to Steve's newly-discovered rivalry with Dan Mason, and suddenly Steve has turned from being the nicest boyfriend on Corrie to being a bit of an idiot. I'm not happy.

I'm a bit worried that we're getting too negative on Corrieblog, but here goes...

In a very well-written and obviously heartfelt article, someone called Keith Newbery has written in the Rye & Battle Observer an article called My 50 year love affair is ending now - and the affair he speaks of is with Coronation Street.

He says, "They tried to dress you up in fashionable clothes and subjected you to all the latest social fads, but those who knew you well realised that at heart you remained a glorious creation. You were never the simple, working-class creature some perceived. You were far more subtle and richly-textured; you possessed a depth and humour that evolved naturally from the characters you nurtured and developed."

Keith now feels, however, that his patience has been tested too much and he's ready to turn away from his erstwhile favourite soap permanently.

I can't help it. I know I don't usually do a Monday Moan but when I saw this photo of Carla in her wedding gear, I was gobsmacked! Up to now, Deirdre has worn the brimmed crown for Most Ugly Wedding Hat but the topper has been knocked off. The Queen is dead, long live the Queen! *What* were the wardrobe people thinking??? Carla is usually the epitome of Weatherfield chic, designer and sleek, and this hat does *not* seem like something she'd be seen dead in! She's wearing a very predatory red strapless dress in contrast to sweet Maria's confection-like dress and I suppose the hat is supposed to give her that "black widow" look but maybe it might not be so ugly if she was wearing all black to this wedding, and really, *that* would have made more of an impact though that's probably the look she was going for. The hat, though, the hat is just wrong and ridiculous. But maybe that's just me. What say you, fans?

Reporting the news of Rob James-Collier's decision to leave Coronation Street, Kris Green of Digital Spy listed all the people who have recently left/are about to leave Coronation Street - and it made depressing reading. Liz Dawn, Tina O'Brien, Wendi Peters, Bruce Jones, Samantha Seager and Zaraah Abrahams have already gone. Julie Hesmondhalgh is on extended leave, Julia Haworth will be going on maternity leave soon, and Jenny Platt and Rupert Hill's departure is imminent.

I know we sometimes complain about there being too many people on Corrie who don't get proper storylines, but there does seem to be a huge turnover in the cast. The producers need to be so careful in the way they handle it - the sense of community and continuity has always been one of Corrie's main strengths. One of the reasons why Vera Duckworth's death was such a huge news item was that a lot of people have "known" Vera their whole lives. Will there be anyone in Corrie in twenty years' time who is in it today?

In Tvor's excellent piece Coronation Street gets it right, she said, "we complain sometimes [about Corrie] because we know how good it can be and we're spoiled," and she's so right.

It's in that context that I have to set today's Monday Moan. It's about a thread which ran through the episode on Friday 25 January, which seemed so boring at the time that I barely mentioned it in my episode review, but people were picking it out in the comments, so I thought I'd come back to it now.

Basically, all that happened (for those of you who won't see it for another eight months, or who missed it) was that Dan and Harry Mason discussed a pair of white stilettos that Harry found in Dan's room. It turned out that these belonged to an old girlfriend of Dan's, with whom he'd had such a fun time (I'm paraphrasing a lot here!) that he now does his best to persuade any current girlfriend to wear them for bed. Later on...

Ok. I'm really *really* getting tired of all the slapping I'm seeing on Coronation Street. I've mentioned it before, several times, at how often people, mainly women, are slapping each other around these days and there's *still* no end in sight. Most recently (I think) was the showdown between Becky and Sarah and on Christmas Day, Sally is going to smack Rosie, Kevin is going to thump John who's also going to get a sound whack from a wronged Fiz and maybe there are some out there that would say he, at least, deserves that last one. (we're not espousing violence here on Corrieblog. We're just sayin'.) Further to that, in the new year, there are whispers in the shadowy corridors that during the bridal shop confrontation, Maria is going to be on the receiving end of Carla's palm and I really can't imagine what Maria would have done to deserve that. You'd think it be the other way around. Can the writers please call a halt to all this violence? It's really been a bad year for it, and next year seems to be starting along the same vein. It's not as if it's never been done on the Street before but it was a rare thing. Now, all this "B###h slapping" is getting old. I think Santa needs to bring a couple of sets of boxing gloves and any future confrontations can be settled honourably in the boxing ring! Discuss.

After last week's moan about Jason and his lack of mates, I feel quite in the moaning groove now.

Today I want to grumble about the lack of cooking sounds on Coronation Street. Walk into any greasy spoon or kebab shop in the land, and what do you hear? The sizzle of frying bacon, the clinking of cutlery and plates, possibly the ping of a microwave, the splash of water running into a sink. In Roy's Rolls and the kebab shop, however, all is silent. In fact it's so quiet that I think they have a computer to produce the food, like in Star Trek. It just comes out of a hatch ready-constituted. Even Wong's chippy had the world's first ever noiseless deep-fat fryer. People are no noisier in their own homes: Gail Platt can make an entire Sunday roast with the silence of a ninja.

I appreciate that all this background noise would give the sound engineers no end of trouble. Apparently even someone wearing a noisy plastic man can cause all kinds of headaches (and not just sartorially), so I shouldn't grumble. But I do.

More Corrie-related grumbling here

It's Monday, it looks as though it's about to rain, and I'm in the mood for a Monday moan. Have a look at this picture of the happy band of brothers and friends on their way to Jason's stag do. From left to right we have Jason's mother's lodger, Jason, Jason's brother (who unexpectedly turned up), Jason's boss... and Jamie.

Does this mean that Jason has no friends of his own age who don't actually live/work in Coronation Street? No-one he went to school with? No-one he goes to football with or to the pub with? On second thoughts, forget that "pub" bit, as the only pub he ever goes to is t'Rovers, since Charlie departed from the planet and the Weatherfield Arms became less alluring. I know Sarah-love keeps him on a tight leash, in case he escapes from any more toilet windows, but is it really plausible that he's got no friends who aren't local at all?

Just to counter today's Monday Moan a little bit, I thought I'd post an extract from a written update I did for an episode that originally aired on Granada on July 17, 1991. Canadian viewers used to get classic Coronation Street episodes from the 90s on the old WTN television network (now called, imaginatively, "W") and I used to be part of a team that would write up episode summaries and post them to a mailing list. This episode had the wonderful Keith Clifford who would later play Charlie West with such perfection, as an old show business mate of Alec Gilroy's called Harry Norton. Their exchange at the bar had me in stitches and after the moan about recasting Keith as a non-Charlie character, I thought you might enjoy this pre-Charlie character's dialogue with Alec. I still get a laugh out of it. Click behind the link below to read it.

Sadly, the Monday Moan slot on Corrieblog has been resurrected over the last couple of weeks because there seems to be things happening on our favourite telly show that some of us aren't best pleased about. This week I'm having a good old rant about Charlie West. If this upcoming spoiler turns out to be true, then actor Keith Clifford will be turning up on Corrie to whisk Cilla off the cobbles. But actor Keith Clifford is well known to Coronation Street fans already as Charlie West. It just doesn't make sense, to me at least, to bring the actor back into Corrie as a different character when Charlie West was a classic Corrie man, and one of Corrieblog's Unsung Heroes. And not only that, he was well acquainted with Les Battersby as one of his mates. There's more over the jump, ooh, I haven't finished yet.

It's time for another Monday Moan as this has really got my goat. Just what was the purpose of having knicker-stitcher Joanne Jackson face all the hoo-hah of being deported if none of it was followed through? One day she was carted off to a deportation centre, the next she was back sewing gussets at Underworld. At the moment this is Coronation Street in a nutshell, for me at least. The cast is too big (again) and there is no time for any sort of character development. Storylines seem to just scratch the surface. [Ben]

Ooh, it's been ages since we had a good moan on a Monday. And this week I'm feeling crabby about cabbies. Will Coronation Street ever let us into the secret of fat Brenda from Levenshulme? Steve McDonald mentioned her again last week but will we ever see her? And just how fat is she? Are there any other Coronation Street characters who have been mentioned but never seen? I can only think of Yana’s fella, Big H. I’m still living in hope he’ll turn up on the cobbles one day. Mind you, just having Yana back would be a start for now.

About a year ago, Flaming Nora had a good old moan about Coronation Street's crap props, in particular characters who are clearly carrying around empty suitcases. I was interested to read in Patricia Phoenix's first biography, All My Burning Bridges, that empty suitcases were one of her greatest bugbears on set, and she would always endeavour to fill an empty case with whatever she could find. Heck, Elsie packed her bags and left Coronation Street enough times over the years, Pat must have been an expert!

Something on Corrie got your goat? Why not click here and browse some other of our Monday Moans? [Elsie Tanner]

It’s time for another Monday Moan and a good old rant about something that’s been bothering me for ages – the staircase in the living room at the Peacock house. Yes, the staircase. We all know it’s moved from one end of the living room to another, which is odd, don’t you think? But what’s odder and slightly scary is that neither Ashley nor Clare have even noticed the change. Is Ashley working too hard at the butcher shop without any help from Boris to notice that his bricks and mortar are moving on their own? Is Clare too doped up on medication to notice her house is spnning out of control around her, ready to engulf her in flames and send her to th’ospickle in a coma? There’s something sinister about that staircase and if the upcoming Corrie fire sparks of its own accord on them stairs, well let's just say that I don’t think I'd be too surprised.

Ooh, we haven't had a Monday Moan in ages so I thought it was time to have a bit of a grumble. Today, we're being miserable and wondering where Roger the plumber went? Janice left Coronation Street to go off to France with Roger while he was working there for a few months but she's returned home alone. Is he coming back, or what? And why hasn't she mentioned him since she's been back? He was the only fella to have put a smile on Janice's face in a long time so you'd have thought she'd at the very least, have noticed he's not around any more. Come on Corrie, explain yourself please! Either that, or bring him back, he was great!

Now then, I know we sometimes have a Monday Moan at the start of the week but as Coronation Street as been so darn good lately, there's precious little to complain about. And so, instead of a Monday Moan I thought we'd have a Monday Man instead, which gives us the opportunity to finally post gratuitous hot pics of Corrie’s hunky Jason Grimshaw (Ryan Thomas). And if you knew how many times I’ve been asked to put pictures like this on Corrieblog, we’ll, you’d know why I’ve finally caved under the pressure. I have to admit, he doesn’t do it for me but if oiled up torsos of the Coronation Street young hunky chunks are your cup of tea, then there are loads more pictures here. Strangely, there are none of Jack Duckworth and sadly, none of Charlie Whelan.  But getting back to Jason when did the chest hair go? And more importantly, why?

This week The Monday Moan is having a bit of a grumble about Jack Duckworth's pigeons. Not only have we not seen the pigeons for months but isn't Frankie Baldwin supposed to be looking after them in the pigeon coop in her back yard?  What'll happen when Frankie leaves, eh, who'll look after them then?

And speaking of people leaving, who'll look after little Amy when Tracy Barlow gets banged up in prison for killing Charlie Stubbs?   A pigeon, pictured with Jack, wasn't best pleased and refused to comment on anything.

Related Post: Jack Duckworth's Pigeons Hit by Bird Flu?

Undoubtedly, the hardest post of the week to write for Corrieblog is The Monday Moan. I mean, finding fault with our favourite soap is becomng increasingly difficult! What's not to like about Coronation Street? But if there's one thing that gets my goat it's when working women are never at work!  Apart from most of the women who work on the street itself - the factory girls, or in the hair salon, pub, Kabin and shop - what about the others? Gail Platt - mother to demon David and saucy Sarah, grandmother to baby Bethany and daughter of amorous Audrey.  Doesn’t she also work at the health centre as its receptionist?  Then why is she never there? And what about Deirdre – why is she never at work in her job at the Council?  Grrrrrr...

This week the Monday Moan is having a right old grumble about having to sit through two episodes of Coronation Street on Friday night last week.  Two episodes on a Monday night is bad enough, but I don't want two on a Friday night as well. I hope it doesn't get to be a regular occurence, this six episodes a week. Ian McKellen who played the fab Mel Hutchwright last week told Parkinson that Corrie actors worked "too hard" already. And it's one of the reasons given for John Savident (Fred Elliot) having left too.  Do we really want Corrie sneaking in six episodes a week every now and then - with watered down storylines and worn out actors?  Grrr.....

This week's Monday Moan is having a right old grumble about The Kabin's post office counter. As the Government calls for small post offices to be closed, there have been rallies in London lobbying to keep them open.  Does this mean Coronation Street’s post office in the Kabin should be shut too? Of course it blinking well should.  It never has any customers,  Rita and Norris never serve behind the counter and no one seems to use it any more.  It's been open since 2000, yet how many times has it been used in a story?  Seems a waste of space to me and surely it's time shut it up and stamp it out! Grrr.....
Related Posts: Kajagoogoo in the Kabin, Kommunists in the Kabin

This weeks' Monday Moan is having a bit of a grumble about the service in the Rovers. It's not that the service is bad, far from it. It's that the service is psychic.  How else do you explain when characters go in there and ask for a "pint of beer" or "bottle of beer" they're given exactly what they wanted without being asked what kind of beer they're after?  If it was "a pint of my usual" which is sometimes asked for, then I'd understand, but it's not.  And as if that wasn't enough to get me confused and bad-tempered, then it's the way the customer always has the right money, always, right down to the last penny and gives it to the bar-staff without waiting for their change.  "That'll be £2.54 please.  Oh, yes, I see that you had the exact amount required in your sweaty little palm waiting to hand it over in exchange for your bottle of beer".  Grrrr..... [Flaming Nora]