OK, OK. I know Brookside is about issues. That’s Uncle Phil’s pet. But Brookside has now become a lecturing platform for ‘The Thoughts of Chairman Phil’, and that’s not good. Heretofore (forgive the legalistic bent), Brookside presented its issues in cleverly disguised, but well-enacted storylines - realistic to the core. We cringed with pain for Mandy Jordache when Trevor arrived on the scene. We were pulled both ways with Peter Harrison and Diana Corkhill in the date-rape storyline. We squirmed at the incest storyline and the Simpsons; our hearts bled for Max and Susannah when their two children were killed.
But no one preached. No one proselytised. And no one ranted and raved.
Now it’s the opposite. The storylines are basically crap - crappily written and crappily acted - and to disguise that fact, we have various characters stand up in the middle of a scene and DECLAIM an issue. Jimmy rants. Ron raves. Dire preaches. One begins to wonder if Phil Redmond practices the Pentecostal faith.
It’s too much.
The morning of the first full day of Ron’s trial has arrived. Inside the Dixon House of Horrors, it’s like a beehive of activity. Rachel and Mike are preparing to leave for the courthouse. As it’s the morning, it’s obvious Mike has just returned from work and has had no chance to have some shut-eye. Rachel has just returned from dropping Beth off at the nursery. (Question: Trona’s Tits is up for sale and appears to be empty. Where, exactly, is this ubiquitous nursery?)
As Rachel enters the house, she sees Mike, booted and suited and ready for court. She asks if he’s O K to go, seeing as he’s had no rest. Mike reiterates that he wants to be there for Ron, as Ron is on trial for defending his home and his family. He then asks if Christy is O K with Rachel taking time off work for the trial. Rachel sighs wearily and says that Christy’s O K, but the trial is going to put a strain on their already precarious finances.
Because of the family’s involvement, there’s no one to babysit free of charge and she will have to put Beth in nursery for this week and that didn’t come cheap. Mike, however, is more worried about the prospect of dippy Anthea giving evidence and what she’s likely to say.
Max and Jacqui are the next to arrive at the house, as Anthea descends the stairs. Jacqui asks how Ron is and how he slept the previous night. Anthea, looking worried, admits that Ron slept badly. As the family mills around the lounge, Ron appears. As he enters the room, he smiles nervously and begins a little speech. He starts off saying that ‘the big day’ has finally arrived. He feels like one of those troopers from the first World War, at the moment when they were told to go over the trenches.
Across the Close at Hotel Corkhill, Lindsey comes downstairs to find the Sage hard at it on the old computer. Lindsey remarks that Jimmy looks as though he’s been sat there for hours. Oh yes, admits Jimmy, peering at the screen and typing furiously. He’s been hard at it since 5:30 in the morning. He’s preparing his notes for the interview he has scheduled with Nikki Shadwick later that day for her psych project.
Lindsey is not impressed and asks Jim what he fancies for breakfast. Jimmy ignores her request, mentioning that soon Ron Dikko, over the way, might be on a diet of bread and water. A random thought suddenly occurs to Jimmy. Hey, Lindsey could have been in the same predicament as Dikko a few years back - banged up because of the gun she had. That could have been she, as a result of her involvement with the Finnegans and her revenge for Gary.
Lindsey dismisses that, saying all that was in the past now and she had changed. Jimmy is furiously typing, remarking about how he was going to put all his interview notes on his web page, but Lindsey reminds him that he still has to re-paint the rainbow shutters outside.
Jimmy remarks absently that that task is ‘on the list’. Lindsey tells him to make sure it’s on TODAY’S list.
Jimmy shushes her by saying that it’s on today’s list ... right after the interview.
Ron Dixon stands in the middle of his lounge, surveying the adult members of the Dixon family facing him.He thanks all of them for being there for him, as he gazes around the house. Funny, it’s taken him years to get this house just the way he wanted it. (No, it’s not. Up until 2000, Ron hadn’t lived in the house since about 1997! Another piece of selective memory loss on the part of Brookside). Anyway, HE says it’s taken him years to get the house just the way he wanted it and by the end of the week, he could be locked up for life and never see it again. This could very well be his last week as a free man. However, he summarises, he’s a great believer in British justice (Ron obviously hasn’t read the papers for some years), and he has faith that British justice will see him through this crisis - with his family right behind him in court.
It’s morning in the Naughty Nurse household as well. Poor pitiful Katie, who gets uglier day by day, sees the morning paper opened to the page that bears a smiling photo of Ron Dixon. The headline heralds that the trial begins today. Katie screws up her pinched and ski-nosed face and looks even uglier as she slams the paper shut and leaves the flat. (Her hair still hasn’t been washed).
The Dixon clan have now made it outside to the Close, all preparing to get into their respective vehicles to travel to the court. Ron gazes at the house and suddenly approaches Jacqui and Mike, who stand on the doorstep. Anthea and Rachel, as befits disloyal spouses, stand slightly to one side. Ron hugs his two children and emotionally tells them that even though the family has been through its shares of ups and downs, a man couldn’t ask to have better kids than Mike or Jacqui. The Dixons would attend the trial as a unit, show scum like the Moffatts that the Dixons were fighters, who stood together through thick and thin.
As he says this, Rachel the Brainless and dippy Anthea look VERY uncomfortable.
Inside Sitcom House, the Antichrist sits at the table, beginning a hunger strike. Ant is refusing to eat and also refusing to go to school. Dire reminds him that he has to attend school today. Mrs Plummer wanted to have a word with him. He doesn’t want to see the head, he maintains.
But she has to hear Ant’s side of the bullying story, encourages Marty. She’s on his side. Marty promises that he’ll watch Ant all the time. The minute that Imelda steps out of line, he’ll ensure that she’s dealt with - through the proper channels, he adds, as Dire shoots him a fearsome glance.
But first Ant has to eat his cereal. He refuses. Anyway, it’s gone all soggy. Marty orders him to eat, in exasperation, as both he and Dire have to go to work.
Now THEY’RE bullying him, Ant exclaims.
Nikki Shadwick must be another victim of the Brookside amnesia. She suddenly finds herself standing on the doorstep of Hotel Corkhill. Jimmy answers the door, expecting her for his interview regarding her uni psych project. Jimmy asks her at what point she finds herself in her studies. Nikki, showing that she’s clearly suffering from amnesia, replies that she’s a SECOND YEAR psych student. (Uni students must be incredibly thick in Liverpool. Even with Nikki taking a year off to recover from her rape trauma, I would reckon this to be her third year at the most. If she had not taken a year off, she’d be a graduate now).
Nikki explains that her project will focus on the real-life experiences of someone who had actually had occasion to use the mental health services of the NHS. She wants to know all about Jim’s first-hand experiences with the resources on his programme. But, as Jimmy ushers her in, he makes it clear he has another agenda. It’s not the resources on which he wants to focus, but the real problem of mental health patients - stigmatisation. (Be careful, Nikki, Jimmy did Adele no favours with her school paper!)
The Dixons are all assembled outside the courtroom, waiting for the trial to commence. Rachel gazes sadly around the place, telling Mike that it brings back all the horrible memories of the trial of Mandy and Beth. Mike sincerely thanks his wife for coming along with the family and assures her that if the proceedings prove to be too much, she can always step outside for a moment.
Ron’s barrister appears, a dapper little man in his wig and glasses. He’s speaking with Jacqui and Max, asking after Ron. Jacqui replies that Ron is, understandably, nervous, as she introduces Mike and Rachel to the barrister. She asks the man what he thought Ron’s chances of acquittal were. The barrister is curiously non-committal, choosing only to say that the defence will give its best shot for Ron’s benefit.
Indicating a tall, spare barrister along the corridor, Ron’s barrister tells the assembled family that the other man is ‘the opposition’, or the Crown’s prosecutor. The barrister excuses himself to speak to the other man, and Jacqui is shocked to the core at the obviously friendly greetings exchanged between the two men.
What are they on about, she demands of Max, chatting away like they were old-time friends. This other bloke is supposedly the enemy and there they are all ally-pally. Max tries to explain to her that the two men probably know each other personally, but find themselves on opposite sides in a professional atmosphere. She shouldn’t worry.
Well, Jacqui observes, it seems to be too much of an old-boys network thing for her comprehension. She’d much rather their guy kept his distance from the enemy. She reckons a stitch-up’s in the offing. Max reminds her that the system DOES work both ways.
Jimmy the Sage is holding court with his latest disciple. Nikki is sat at the Corkhill table, a notepad opened before her. In one of the most useless pieces of episode EVER broadcast on Brookie, Jimmy is holding forth in the dissemination of Phil Redmond’s opinion of mental health care in the NHS.
Jimmy assures Nikki that he found that the time he spent sectioned in hospital was one of the most useful times of his illness. He learned there to accept his illness and not fight it.
Nikki is intrigued. In a comment that proves that she’s either too thick to be in uni at all or that her programme is dire in the extreme, she ignorantly observes that she thought most mental patients spent all their time in hozzy being drugged up to their eyeballs.
Ah, there’s where Nikki’s wrong, quoth the Sage. And she’s revealing most people’s common assumptions about mental patients. Most people, he says, are frightened of people with mental health problems. They are ashamed and therefore seek to stigmatise these unfortunates. Did Nikki realise that one quarter of the population in Great Britain suffers from mental health problems? (I would have assumed that somewhere her course would have mentioned that figure). Why, some of the people Jim had met in hozzy had been struggling to live with their problems for years.
No, siree, most ‘normal’ people are only too quick to shy away from people with mental health problems. Even their own families are happiest when the victim is locked up. It’s like a walking disease, the Sage emphasises. A disease that presents the danger of pushing the sufferer over the edge. Living with mental illness is like living in a parallel universe. Stigmatise-world, Jim calls it.
Ex-mental patients are no better than ex-cons, he says. Try applying for a job and telling your employer that you’ve had mental health problems. It’s tantamount to having a criminal record. Try applying for housing. That’s a joke. You’re plopped in some ‘drop-in’ centre, situated in some run-down shop that stinks of stale fag smoke. You’re put in with other people of the same ilk and the staff caring for you are run ragged. (Er, what experience has Jimmy had of such places?)
Of course, he’s not saying that the help in these places is no good - they ARE good people, but their primary function is to hold the victims together emotionally until they’re tipped over the edge, the way he was when he found himself on the school roof.
But, Nikki interjects, when Jimmy found himself on the roof of Brookie Comp, he stepped back.
Wrong, says the Sage, he was dragged back. But in truth, he’d already jumped, figuratively speaking, of course.
Nikki, feeling as many other women on the Close have felt, that she can trust the Sage, reveals that she stood on the edge of a roof once and wondered if she should jump.
The veritable Sage asks wisely, if the girl were glad that she didn’t jump.
Nikki looks pensive and replies that only sometimes she’s glad she didn’t jump.
Anthea and Ron are standing uneasily in the corridor outside the courtroom. Anthea sincerely wishes things go well for him. She’s visibly nervous, and Ron assures her that things WILL go well for him - all Anthea has to do is to remain calm and back him up, never mind the threat from Gobby Moffatt. As she has to remain in the corridor until called to give evidence, he warns her to avoid Gobby Moffatt at all costs.
Ron is called into the court by his solicitor and again, she wishes her husband good luck. Ron turns to face her one last time. Luck shouldn’t have to come into it, he says, if he gets what he needs from Anthea in this instance.
Jimmy is still preaching his sermon to the converted. Nikki sits at the
table, racing to keep apace with Jim’s diatribe as she struggles to take
notes. She tells Jim that it was hard to talk to people about what she’d
been through with the rape. That’s it! Jimmy confirms. She felt stigmatised.
In
.
Nikki admits that she never really talked to her family; she was too scared to talk to them. (Funny, I seem to recall that’s all she did. She talked non-stop for a year. We all heard her.)
Jacqui and Max stand in the court corridor, chatting to Anthea and trying to encourage her to remain calm. Jacqui tells her that everyone honestly feels awful about what happened to Clint. Whilst nothing they could do could bring him back now, they could at least try to keep Ron out of jail.
Max reminds Anthea that if Ron is found guilty, he’d go to prison for the rest of his life. She must realise, Max says, that in his heart of hearts, Ron Dixon never meant to kill anyone. He was simply trying to protect his family and his home.
At that moment, the outer doors open, and the jealous piece of parasitic flesh known as poor, pitiful, ugly Katie enters, masquerading as the would-be grieving widow.
‘Uh-oh,’ remarks Jacqui, ‘look who’s just turned up.’
Max takes his wife and Anthea by the arms and turns them gently away from Katie, as they try to walk further down the corridor. Clocking the action, Katie, dressed in black and only lacking a pointed black hat and a wart to double as a real witch, snarls sarcastically that they shouldn’t feel they had to run away from her.
Jacqui glances back at the wretch over her shoulder and snaps that Katie should just ‘leave it’ for now. It was neither the time nor the place.
Katie wants Jacqui to tell her how long Jacqui had known that Clint wasn’t really a burglar. At least Anthea had the common decency to tell her. (No, Anthea was in the throes of a menopausal panic attack, you idiot! She wasn’t thinking straight). Now, continues Katie, the whole world would know the truth about Ron Dixon.
As Jacqui and Max walk toward the doors of the courtroom, Katie screams that Jacqui should be on trial as well, for saying that the sainted Clint was scum. (Now this IS going too far!)
As the couple reach the courtroom doors, they open violently to reveal the fat form of Gobby Moffatt in full suit, his pea-shaped bullet head diminutive in comparison to the rest of his bulk, silhouetted against the open doors. Jacqui asks rhetorically what he’s doing there.
Gobby looks threateningly at the couple and snarls out that his brother was ‘merrr-derred’. That’s what he was doing there. And he happens to be in court because one Ron Dixon shot Clint and he was there to see Ron get sent down.
As Jacqui and Max scurry into the courtroom, Katie faces the fat yob. She’s equally nasty with him and tells him in no uncertain terms that Clint died because of Gobby’s actions. Gobby denies that, but Katie continues to level her accusations. Gobby was at the Dixons’ that evening solely to rob and terrorise them, and Clint was there to stop him. Because of Gobby, Clint got killed.
Jimmy’s rant to Nikki continues apace. The trouble with things these days, he witters, is that the government thnks it’s bad to spend money on people who need it. (Ah, the old Welfare State, a relic of Old Labour). Like people with mental health problems - or students, offers Nikki. But students aren’t homeless, says Jimmy, and they can strike and protest.
Just look what gets government money, Jimmy points out, tobacco companies, fuel companies, breweries - all vested interests. When the government threatens to pull the plug on their interests, these businesses fight. All the fight’s gone out of mental health patients, Jimmy points out.
He’s learned that from the Internet, chatting to all his like and sundry in chat rooms. You lose your voice, he says, you lose your confidence. (That’s what mental illness does for you, he confides). You become like a plague monster.
Suddenly, Jimmy notes the ferocity with which Nikki is struggling to keep up with his lecture. She points out to Jim that this is only just one assignment, and Jimmy wisely decides he’d best bring his rant to an end.
The prosecution has begun to present its case in the courtroom. The tall, lean barrister stands and announces that Ron Dixon is charged with murder. He is the householder at 8 Brookside Close. The case for the prosecution notes that a man was shot dead on those premises, and whilst it does not argue that the householder had the right to take reasonable steps to defend himself, Ron Dixon, it would be proved, went one step further and committed murder.
He possessed a shotgun, a weapon that was clearly illegal. He was ready and waiting and had the gun in good operating order and ready to use. Oh, he admits that people possess firearms, both legally and illegally. And in some cases they are forced to fire them. But the prosecution would prove that the man shot dead was unarmed and posed no threat. In short, there was never any need for Ron Dixon to have pulled the trigger.
Marty and Ant have returned home for lunchtime. Ant looks a lot more relaxed and informs Dire, who’s in the sitcom kitchen, that Imelda wasn’t in school today. Marty reports that the head saw Ant and that Ant, indeed, behaved like a star. He was proud of him.
Dire offers the duo sarnies she’s prepared, as Marty tells her that the head can’t do anything with Imelda until the girl comes back to school. It looks as though she sussed something was up and she’s sagged off.
The prosecution continues presenting its preamble. Ron Dixon, he says, possessed that gun illegally. He bought the gun illegally. Of course, he was not justified in using it, but the question to be proven was: Did he intend to use it?
Lindsey returns from her shift to find Jimmy still sitting at the computer. She points out that the paint brushes are still outside, unused.
Sorry, Jimmy apologises. He got side-tracked with Nikki’s mental health project. The interview gave him some great ideas for his web page, he informs her.
Suddenly the computer speaks. There’s an e-mail arrived. Well, bust my britches! This one took a long time a-comin;! It looks as though LINDSEY has an e-mail from Jacqui at the Health Club. Should Jimmy open it?
Without waiting for Lindsey’s consent, he does so. It’s a brief message from Jacqui, who seems to have flown magically from the courtroom and all her attendant cares and worries to inform Lindsey that SOL says the job in Newcastle is hers - all she has to do is ring the following number to tell them that she’s interested.
Lindsey reads the message, shrugs her shoulders and asks Jimmy if he fancies a sarnie.
Hang on a minute, shouts Jimmy, as she turns to go into the kitchen. What’s the e-mail all about? Lindsey explains to him that it has to do with an opening for a manager in a health club in Newcastle. So, Jimmy wants to know, is it a better job than what Lindsey has at the moment? Yes, Lindsey answers. With better prospects and better pay? Yes, she replies.
So Lindsey’s just got a job offer, a good job offer, and she plans on turning it down? Jimmy still can’t find the logic in this.
It’s not right, says Lindsey, shortly, and walks off to make the tea.
Jimmy is left thinking about the reasons Lindsey could have for not accepting the offer of a better job. The realisation dawns on him that he is the reason the girl doesn’t wish to accept this.
Although Anthea must wait in the corridor to be called as a witness, for some reason, poor, pitiful, ugly Katie hasn’t entered the courtroom yet. No, she’s continuing her barney with Gobby, who’s milking the scene for Anthea’s benefit.
Did Katie have any idea how hard it had been for poor, downtrodden Gobby to live with the idea that, but for his action that night, Clint might still be alive? His brother, sorry, his ‘broother’ was dead because of him. He’s standing over a seated Katie, breathing down heavily on her. He pauses a moment in his tirade to glance surreptitiously over his shoulder at the eavesdropping Anthea. She doesn’t have to strain very hard to hear their conversation, as the pair of them are shouting at the top of their awful Scouse voices.
Clocking Anthea listening, when Gobby turns back to Katie, he piles on the crocodile tears, making sobbing sounds as he talks, but shedding no tears whatsoever (probably because he’s such a bad actor that he can’t make himself cry). He blubs that Clint had only followed him to try to stop him from doing what he had planned to do to the Dixons, and Clint had copped the bullet meant for him. Boo-hoo! How is poor, deprived Gobby going to live with himself?
Katie replies roughly that Gobby should have thought of that, before he decided rashly to lash out at the Dixons that night.
Inside the courtroom, the prosecution is coming to the end of its preamble. The barrister is in no doubt that householders do have the right to defend themselves and their property against intruders, but the householder is not entitled to take a gun and blast away at an intruder in the short distance of fourteen feet. It was, therefore, the intention of the Crown to prove that Ron Dixon did not act in self-defence that evening, but rather he had committed cold-blooded murder.
In the dock, Ron exchanges uneasy glances with his watching family.
Poor, pitiful, ugly Katie has finally scurried off to the courtroom, leaving the fat yob alone with Anthea. He approaches the sitting woman menacingly and towers over her with his blobby bulk. Cockily, he reckons that Anthea might have a long wait on her hands, sitting there. So, she’ll have ample time to think. Was she going to tell the truth? He asks, threateningly.
Anthea sits stiffly, not presuming to look the arsehole in the face. She says stoutly: ‘I’ve made me mind oop. I’m going to support me’oosband.’
Gobby leans down and asks once more if she’s going to tell the truth. Anthea repeats that she’s supporting Ron.
So, she’s going to lie under oath then, is that it? Gobby wants to know. He leans down even closer to Anthea now, his head level with hers and inches from her face. He screws his flabby face up into a scowl and hisses that Anthea’s making a big mistake, he repeats ... A BIG MISTAKE.
Anthea winces, as if from pain, and turns her head away - but whether it’s from fear or the stench of Gobby’s halitosis, is anyone’s guess. This is Brookside, remember?
Summary © 2001 Marion Watts
Brookside and all related materials are © Mersey Television 1982-2001