Loose Women

It’s Monday afternoon and I’m reclining on a slightly shabby, yet highly comfortable Chaise longue. I’m wallowing in mild self-loathing because rather than taking advantage of a Monday booked off work to go outside and enjoy the sterling weather, I am instead watching a group of middle-aged women have a contrived conversation about fuck all.

Today’s guest is Coronation Street actress Dearbhla Molloy (shrugs shoulders), and she is relaying a predictably dull Coronation Street related anecdote. The stories that are told on Loose Women tend to be either grossly exaggerated yarns, or more frequently, outright lies. Coleen Nolan is the most prolific offender, and she specialises in far-fetched tales of domestic woe. From what I gather, her home-life consists in her braving a never-ending cycle of psychological abuse at the hands of her evil spouse ‘Ray’. If I was Ray, I would have serious words. Imagine going into work and having to be greeted by a gallery of unwarranted scowls from all of your female colleagues:

Ray: “Hi Doreen, you Okay?”

Doreen: “Piss off Ray; I heard what you said to Coleen when you went to Thorpe Park the other week.”

Ray: “Eh?”

Doreen: “You told her she wouldn’t be allowed on the log flume because she exceeded the weight limit. You then slapped a packet of Doritos out of her hand and called her ‘fat slag’.”

Presumably, Ray must then leave the staff room, and have to suffer the indignity of eating his Greggs Steak Bake huddled in a toilet cubicle like some kind of famished cottager. On one occasion, Coleen relayed a festive anecdote which detailed how during their first Christmas together, Ray took offence to the lumpy gravy she had served him with his roast dinner. Ray threw his toys out of the pram big time, and ended up forcing Coleen into eating her lacklustre supper off the carpet. Coleen had only gone and passed off a harrowing Eastenders Christmas special as her own personal experience! Yet rather than following Little Mo’s lead in bludgeoning her spouse with an iron, Coleen opted to share her woes with the Loose Women panel.

Coleen was mercifully absent from Monday's instalment of Loose Women (maybe Ray had locked her in the shed again) and I was being treated to a dull, but probably truthful anecdote courtesy of Dearbhla Molloy (fuck knows). If you have a life and missed this televisual gem, I have broken down the anecdote into three parts:

PART 1: Coronation Street airs 4 times a week, so it has a very quick turnover of episodes. This means that the actors do not have long to learn their lines.

PART 2: To save time Dearbhla would only read the pages from the script that contained her dialogue. She even went as far as ripping these particular pages from the script, and throwing the rest of script away. This sounds a bit extreme, but whatever.

PART 3: The consequence of this erratic behaviour was that she would tune into an episode of Corrie in which she starred, only to be taken surprise by what she saw on screen.

Now this anecdote is in itself harmless, it's very boring, but harmless. The streak of evil that runs through ITV's Loose Women only becomes manifest in the reaction of the regular panellists to such an innocuous anecdote. First to stick her oar in is today's host Jackie Brambles, who bellows: “You should have given Jane a call!" To understand this seemingly random interjection, you need to know that fellow panellist and former cruise ship warbler Jane McDonald is a big fan of Coronation Street. Brambles is giving the rest of the panel the green light to kick off; because when one of this lot goes, they all do. It's like being in the bottom set for GCSE Maths at a Lewisham comprehensive.

After Brambles battle cry of “You should have given Jane a call!” Jane herself decides to get involved. She simply shouts "SPEED DIAL".

Dearbhla Molloy's anecdote has managed to provoke a flurry of banter amongst the panellists which has become both increasingly abstract and louder with each contribution. Dearbhla became perplexed to point of physical distress at what the banshees from Loose Women had done to her original story. While it may have been boring, at least it was delivered at an appropriate volume and had a coherent narrative.