Ooh, that Ken Barlow! Where does he get off, letting that glamour-puss on the houseboat think he's single!

I thought he was going to slip and fall into the canal, chasing that titchy dog along the tow-path. How come he's got a dog all of a sudden?

What with the dog, the woman in full make-up with soup on the stove, (Stephanie something - Beecham? )and the canal make-over, , it was as if the episode had been written for Mills and Boone - the pensioners' imprint, that is.

Sheila

The dog belongs to Blanche, Sheila. To be fair to Ken he wasn't lying when he said Peter's mother was dead. Remember, that was Val, played by the brilliant Anne Reid, died when she was killed by an electric shock using a hairdryer. It's just that the moment passed when he could have put the barge woman right and owned up to marrying again. Now he is caught in a lie of course. I think it said it all, the way Deidre slapped that awful tinned potato and leek soup into a pan. I love the way they keep this up with Ken. He must be one of the few university educated people of his generation that didn't leave his background behind, bless him and he so regrets it, periodically.

Sorry I missed the dog bits before - my watching's a bit patchy lately. Yes, I remember the scene where Ken's first wife Val, mother of the twins was electrocuted by the faulty socket and the electric kettle, or was it a hairdryer? That doesn't cancel out subsequent wives such as Deirdre, who he married twice,I think, the second time after Samyr,the Algerian waiter's, murder. Did he ever marry the one with the dodgy arm that nobody ever mentioned? She looked similar to the new glamorous one.

'I didn't get chance to put her straight' wouldn't wash with me, I'm afraid, and Ken is guilty, especially as he should have clocked the full pmake-up - remarkable, surely for a house-boat dweller. She must be one of these 'worth it' women. It's clear the writers are setting her up as femme fatale, with Ken the 'innocent' party. She always plays that part and he's always almost falling for it.

I wonder if she represents the new Bohemian strata of Weatherfield society? She's going to get a bit lonely with only Ken to play with, although she didn't flinch when he said 'people of our age'. How old is he now, 70? He always talks posh, doesn't he? But he's dull, dull, dull.

Sheila

Yes, he's dull, but he's attractive. It's the twinkle in the eye. Like he's a bit of a devil too. Or maybe I've just got to that age now where grandads seem attractive.

Yes, he has a slight twinkle and a dry sense of humour but also an unattractive air of defeat and is incredibly unadventurous. He's supposed to be the street's 'intellectual'but I don't see much evidence.

His mother-in-law constantly gets the better of him -walking her dog is about all he's good for,in her opinion. She even threw away the manuscript of his novel and he didn't protest much - just started looking through the dustbin with a resigned expression on his face. He must have been too gormless to have a back-up - we never heard of it again. (Well, I didn't)

Deirdre strays at the drop of a hat, (living viacariously on the crumbs of friend Liz's fling at present) so we can assume he's just as sluggish in bed. Apart from Samyr, she had Mike Baldwin, the previous factory owner ( I much prefer evil Tony) and philander Dev from the corner shop. Ken likes a very dull, dogsbody kind of life, a man who just drifts along - literally, this time, if Stephanie has her evil way with him on that boat. Can't wait to see him get an attack of the guilty conscience before he's even done anything. Yes, Leek and Potato is about right for him.

Sheila

His son Linus is very attractive I think. William Roache has leeched off Corrie since the start. To think, he used to be an angry young man in a duffle coat and Joanna Lumley once played his girlfriend!

I've got a bit of a thing for Peter Barlow, actually...

He may have had a duffle coat, but the only thing that got him angry was his Uncle Albert telling him off for getting home later than 10pm.

I can't remember Joanna Lumley as his girl-friend,though.

Sheila

http://www.corrieblog.tv/2008/06/joanna_lumleys.html

Here you are, Sheila!

Nessie, know what you mean about PB but he's only about five foot tall, and I'm afraid short men just don't do it for me!

Thanks for this, Jem.

Just typical - trying to get off with some middle-class type he was slumming - liked the remark about the 'sweet little house'. Maybe he thought he was Jimmy Porter.

I see what was meant by the twinkling eyes, though. I forget who it was he was turning on the unconvincing charm for last night in The Rovers, but I reckon they had the spot-lights on him to help out.

Sheila

Oh no! That canal-boat floosie's gone right for the jugular with Ken! As he adnitted before descending to her cosy Romany-style den, he 'never could resist a rhyming couplet'. The sheer affrontary of the way she 'accidentally' left the 'Streetcar Named Desire' out too - and then told Ken he was too 'sensitive' to read the Kowalski role when helping her learn her limes. He was twinkling away ten to the dozen. In any case,the mental image of Ken in a Marlon Brando-style vest might be too much for the viewers.

My husband said he recognised the woman as one seen playing a high-class conwoman in 'Bad Girls', with the woman who played Mike Baldwin's wife, Alma, as her side-kick.

Putting together all these clues, together with her 'accidentally' having a pot of Ken's favourite leek-and-potato soup in the cauldron as he was passing, it looks like a set-up.

But what on earth could she want him for?

Sheila