I’ll Beale Back

‘“I SLEPT with the Cup,” says Liverpool’s captain Steve Gerrard on the Sun’s front-page.

EastEnders’ very own Princess Diana

Good for him, he deserves it. What grown man would not be turned on by the thought of spending the night with his arms wrapped round the huge European Cup, the most coruscating prize in club football?

And, in any case, it makes a change from the usual lurid headlines about footballers sleeping with mistresses and spit roasts.

But if it’s the seedier side of human life you’re after, you need to stick with the Sun, and turn on a few pages to hear the news from the EastEnders set.

No, it’s nothing as depraved and revolting as Leslie Grantham’s webcam chat, rather the news that Cindy Beale, the adulterous, murderous character of bygone years might return to the soap.

“If you thought [the] Liverpool comeback was amazing,” says the Sun, “wait till you see what EastEnders are plotting.”

You see, Beale never died. It was all a hoax, a make believe death concocted by the police to put Cindy on a witness protection scheme.

“EastEnders viewers wept as they watched her funeral,” says the Sun, the paper’s hacks taking up the challenge of creating something as far removed from reality as the soap’s plot-challenged writers.

But this is not all. And we can now reveal that not only might Cindy be making a return to the palsied soap, but so too are Babs Windsor, Ross Kemp, Steve McFadden and Mike Reid.

Because in soap – especially a failing soap – no-one dies. The actors just stop breathing…’

Posted: 27th, May 2005 | In: Tabloids Comment | TrackBack | Permalink