Coronation Street: the funniest comedy on the telebox. Apart from David Platt that is

Ah, Coronation Street. I hadn’t watched it in absolutely ages, but a weekend at home with my dedicated Corrie fan parents soon had me all caught up on the recent goings-on of Weatherfield. However, it did involve a certain amount of “Who’s yer man?”, “Hang on, that wan from Eastenders is Leanne’s mam?” and “What do you mean Chesney has a baby now, sure he’s only ten, isn’t he?” I also managed to pick up right where I left off in my hatred of David Platt, as it took no time at all until I was shouting “It’s not like YOU’D be the one stuck being pregnant for nine flipping months, you little toerag!” at the telly.

To be honest, I’d forgotten how much fun it is to watch Corrie. In amongst storylines like Tina being Gary and Izzy’s surrogate, Tyrone’s struggle in dealing with his abusive girlfriend and Peter Barlow turning up like a heavily eyelinered pantomime villain (read A peek inside Peter Barlow's makeup bag) and ruining Nick and Leanne’s plans to elope to Vegas with Simon in tow (could he be the cutest kid of all time?), there’s a huge amount of wonderfully written humour in it.

While Eastenders takes on heavy hitting plot developments with a side order of grinding misery, Corrie manages to balance arguments, drink-throwing and deteriorating relationships with silliness like Denis and Steve’s escalating lollipop man feud and Rita and Norris bickering behind the counter of the Kabin.

Often when things are getting tense or a fight is about to break out in the Rovers, the throwaway lines muttered by those on the sidelines can be the funniest of all. In particular, when Tina’s secret surrogacy was revealed to everyone in the pub on Friday night, it was Beth’s comment about how hard childbirth can be on a body, i.e. “the damage our Craig did to my undercarraige”, that kept things from spiralling into outright gloom territory.

It’s the characters that really make Corrie so enjoyable to watch, and the show has a well worn track record at this stage for introducing horrible characters and redeeming them so craftily that before you know it, they’re some of your favourites. Becky, Tyrone, Fiz and both the Battersby and the Windass clan all went through the Corrie bad-to-loveable mill in the past, although I seriously can’t ever see myself coming around to David Platt. He’s a lost cause.

Anyway, we were treated to a particularly excellent Corrie exchange on Monday night, courtesy of the ever dopey Jason, when he was chatting to Stella about colour charts for painting her bedroom. “There’s fifty shades of blue ‘ere”, he informed her, when Beth chimed in with “Makes a change from Fifty Shades of Grey, eh Stella?” A confused Jason then protested “You never said owt about grey!” Someone buy those writers a drink, immediately.

So, are you a Corrie fan? If so, which characters do you love? Or hate? (*coughDAVIDcough*)