Audrey and Fred

[pearly queen]

Bev is already very sensitive to the fact that Audrey is a potential rival - I've noticed how recently Bev keeps telling Fred that she loves him, whereas before she never showed him much affection.

[Nick]

Its a classic case of not missing your water till your well runs dry......she didnt want Fred herself..but she dosen't want anyone else to have him either..now that she has the prospect of him not being there for her she realizes what she is missing

[sallywebster]

She is being quite selfish really, but perhaps not intentionally. She should have just kept quiet about her feelings for Fred and let him be happy with Bev.

[BillyNiblick]

sallywebster said:

She is being quite selfish really, but perhaps not intentionally. She should have just kept quiet about her feelings for Fred and let him be happy with Bev.

Not for the first time, I'm struck by the sheer weirdness of us talking about soap characters as if they are real people.
We know that Fred "dies" on Monday, yet we're speculating about Fred possibly being happy with Bev. Ain't it strange?

[sallywebster]

Yes it is quite weird. But when you are a fan the characters become like really people as we watch them 5 times a week!

[stix]

my question did he marry Bev first

[Nick]

I am on tenterhooks...We are going to Devon on Monday as well so will have to set the video for Mondays and wednesdays episodes and avoid the newspapers !!!!!

[RitaLittlewood]

Reading the spoilers (this is the 2nd time they've had a will reading before the funeral) it does look like he did. There again he might not have. But then why would Bev be upset he left her nothing unless she's a money-grabbing bitch? Surely she only would if she was legally his wife.

Patsy

[sallywebster]

Im glad we dont know, it will make the episode more gripping to watch on Monday!

[RitaLittlewood]

Apparently there were no family shots of Sarah/Jason and we know that never happened but there are with Fred/Bev. To do 2 jiltings within a couple of months (3 in 13) would be just plain ridiculous even for them.

Patsy

[Nick]

If Fred has a will written in favour of Ashley,Bev won't have a leg to stand on....I would imagine that Fred would leave the butchers shop & house to Ashley..and prob hasn't got round to changing his will in Bev's favour

[tracey]

anyone see the picture of Fred in the sun TV mag today it shows him laid out in the coffin.

[valda]

yes I did and it was so sad to see him like that :,(

[sallywebster]

I didnt see them in the sun but in some of the other soap and tv mags. Very sad.

[RitaLittlewood]

Maybe Bev feels he never loved her at all to even leave her a pork cho.

Yes that's a very common pic. One of the TV mags printed it the wrong way round. LOL!

Patsy

[pearly queen]

If I were Ashley and Fred had died leaving me everything, and nothing to Bev - I'd leave Bev installed in the pub, and be glad that Ludicrous Liz wasn't going to get her claws into the place.

[Nick]

I think the pub has already gone through,they have signed the contracts..mind you a death could put a spanner in the works

[sallywebster]

Yes id imagine the pub sale has gone through not though, although it does take weeks sometimes so you never know!

[BillyNiblick]

blanche said:

I think the pub has already gone through,they have signed the contracts..mind you a death could put a spanner in the works

There is a broad hint in this also rather nice piece from yesterday's Grauniad :

It's no secret that after 12 years on Coronation Street, Elliott is hanging up his butcher's apron for good. According to gossip, actor John Savident was simply tired of the five episodes per week grind; probably made worse by the fact that as a Corrie linchpin he was in virtually every episode, with the double toil of repeating all his lines twice. "Put the kettle on Shelley ... I say, I say! Put the kettle on Shelley! Let's have us some tea! I say! Let's have us some tea!"

I'll miss Fred Elliott a lot. I'll miss his blunt common sense, forever flawed by his quirk of proposing to every woman he set eyes on. I'll miss his rants about the life-enhancing properties of steak and kidney pudding. I'll miss his barely concealed enjoyment of a good gossip with Shelley, Betty and Violet in the Rovers backroom. I'll miss how sometimes Fred would be propping up the bar, saying an unremarkable line in a throwaway scene, but add a wobble of the head or a camp tap of the fag that somehow made it profound.
Eventually one of Fred's marriage proposals came up trumps when Bev Unwin, Shelley's mother, agreed to be Mrs Elliott. Bev was a safer bet than most of Fred's previous ventures, being neither a fake Thai bride, married to anyone else, shagging Mike Baldwin, or simply physically repelled by his appearance or habit of turning up on dates with "a nice juicy bit of topside" tucked under his arm as a romantic gift.
Fred and Bev's plan was to marry, move away and live happily ever after, although things have gotten sticky now Fred's good friend Audrey Roberts has decided to pipe up she has strong feelings for him. Fred proposed to Audrey and was rejected by her long ago. In a secret meeting last week, Audrey told Fred how torn apart she now felt. "But why did you say no when I asked you?" said Fred. "Because I thought I could do better," replied Audrey sadly, which sounds terribly capricious and brazen on paper but if you saw the scene was rather choking.
Here was Audrey Roberts: ex-mayoress, faded glamour puss, her of the perfect hair, the posh-Manc lilt and the bulging bank account, sitting in her house broken and bereft as the penny dropped that she was 66, alone and had blown it. This week, Fred and Bev are to marry. I'll not spoil it, but all I'll say is that Rita was very kind to say she'd do full refunds at The Kabin on unopened confetti

[/b].

In other news Rosie Webster, Sally's teenage daughter has conjured up another deliciously cruel way to punish her mother. Rosie and Craig have deigned that they'll accompany the Webster clan on their jaunt to Paris, but are secretly planning to abscond to Berlin to begin a new life. Craig's read all about Berlin in a student guidebook and imagines it's like an extended version of Whitby Goth Weekend, where they'll probably get met at Brandenburg airport by Andrew Eldritch whistling the German national anthem, Temple Of Love, before whisking them away to a 24-hour non-stop celebration of darkness. They may be disappointed. Rosie is such a deceitful little brat that I can't watch a scene with her in it without ranting at the TV about her mother sweating down at the knicker factory to pay for her private education.
[/quote]

[pearly queen]

It's such a shame they're killing Fred off - I'll miss him when he goes.

Ashley has his eyes on getting the butcher's shop all to himself - that's why he advised Fred to ignore Audrey and marry Bev, so desperate in fact that he went to the pub leaving Mad Claire alone in the house with two babies. Obviously mental illness is an easily and quickly cured affair in Weatherfield: one minute she pushing a pram into the traffic, next minute she's Mother Of The Year.

[pearly queen]

So poor Bev never got the ring on her finger before Fred died.

I don't understand why Fred went charging round to Audrey's to tell he didn't want her. Huh? If that were the case he could have phoned her in a couple of weeks time to say that he had no regrets.

Bev looked pretty awful, IMO, what was that bandage thing stuck to her head?
Not as bad as Sean, though, with his tie inside the shirt he looked like Choo Choo from Top Cat.

RIP Fred - you're well out of the mad bitch fight that's on the horizon between Bev and Audrey.

[RitaLittlewood]

I'd have thought the best way to get the message across was the marry the other person in the first place.

Patsy

[pearly queen]

Bev and Ashley will try to make out it was all Audrey's fault for giving him the stress that made him collapse; on the other hand it could be said that him being at Audrey's averted a lot of stress for everyone else at the church: if 'his time had come' as they say, he would have croaked right there in the middle of the wedding service.

That would have been a terrible thing to happen to Bev on her wedding day, and Audrey has been punished for interfering because she wound up with his dead body in her hallway.

[RitaLittlewood]

Would have been good though. "I do, I say, I...." Crash!

Too many non-weddings in Corrie these days.

Patsy

[sallywebster]

That was a good episode tonight. Poor Bev, and Poor Ashley.

10/10 Corrie!