charity

Jim Shelley's column in the Mirror:

GIVE IT ALL TO CHARITY Mar 8 2005


IN Emmerdale, it was LWC week one. Yup, Life Without Charity. However will we manage?

Having wreaked a year's worth of havoc in one evening, she drove off into t'night with her baby Noah but without Cain (her cousin/lover) or daughter Debbie.

"They were real tears!" actress Emma Atkins told Fern Britton on This Morning. Quite how she could see into my living room, I will never know.

Atkins' reason for leaving Emmerdale was commendably perceptive.

"There are only so many millionaires Charity could marry," she quipped. Then again, per head of population, Emmerdale has more than its fair share of millionaires - and murderers.

Charity exacted her revenge on the King family by turning up at Jimmy King's 40th birthday party brandishing a video of herself and Jimmy in bed together. "Sur-prise!"

Wife Sadie (Patsy Kensit) was not amused - though when is she ever? (Sadie is Jimmy's wife by the way, not Charity's - although with Charity you never know).

The tape also revealed that Sadie had sabotaged Charity's wedding to millionaire Tom King (Mike Baldwin). It confirmed that Jimmy had given Charity one of Sadie's diamond necklaces plus 200 grand in blackmail money. Oh, and that the King brothers had murdered Paul Marsden. Apart from that, it didn't really contain much.

Predictably, it all kicked off. Charity floored Sadie with a right hook. Tom King sacked Jimmy from the family business (muck-collecting, appropriately), giving him "the bullet, the push, the old heave-ho" - which pretty much covers it.

The tape became the talk of t'village, with rumours that it featured handcuffs and farming implements.

Even Viv was scandalised - no mean feat.

"How could Jimmy have gone with that cheap tart!" Sadie squealed - an unfair slur given that Charity is, in fact, a very expensive tart.

From there, Charity returned to the Dingles' farm which, for those of us who live in a basement in the smoke, turns out to be a mansion.

"Managed to tie up all those loose ends then?" Lisa asked.

"Oh yeah!" Charity replied with characteristic aplomb. "Well and truly knotted."

Having upstaged her fellow cast members - I mean characters - yet again, Charity was off. Cain (Dee Dee Ramone) was so upset, his goatee disappeared mid-episode.

He watched her go, lurking in the darkness, doing That Expression That He Does.

Debbie stayed and could be the show's salvation - ie, the new Charity. Even though she's only 15, the producers obviously couldn't wait. Debbie's already up the duff.

She was fantastically blase about watching a video of her mother having sex with a man Debbie described as "minging".

"She did it to make me feel better," Debbie explained to Uncle Zak.

It's hard to see who else will fill Charity's, um, gap. By last night's episode, Patsy had already started undressing every time Jimmy walked into the room (or even the pub): very entertaining and certainly an improvement on, say, Emily, Betty, or The Woman With The Log (Edna), but not really in Charity's league.

Sadie needs to have an affair. Sadie and Jimmy's brother Matthew (Heathcliff) would be good. Sadie and Zoe (Kiki the frog from Hector's House) would be following in Charity's footprints - and not just her footprints! So would Sadie and Cain.

Other ideas for storylines could include: Chloe and Tom, the Rev Ethan and Lorraine Chase, Andy and one of his best milkers.

After all, Emmerdale's motto is partly what makes it so entertaining. Anything is possible.