There's a bizarre Coronation Street spoiler in today's Daily Star. The paper reckons that Corrie's Rovers Return is facing a plague of monster rats that will terrorise locals in the pub, Roy's Rolls and Nick Tilsley’s bistro.
Bosses at the ITV1 soap came up with the storyline after seeing a news report last year in which real-life residents of a Bradford council estate shot and killed a 3ft rat.
Norris takes it upon himself to get tid of the rodents and tells Rita: “They may have beaten amateurs like Roy Cropper and Nick Tilsley but they’ll find me quite a different adversary altogether. Let’s see them get past the Pied Piper of Weatherfield!” In hilarious scenes, Norris will be seen carrying out daily inspections of the Street’s gardens and back alleys so he can capture and kill the rats. But they prove more than a match for his traps and poison, and the problem goes from bad to worse in the heat of the Weatherfield summer. Soon most of the area’s houses are over-run with the beasts.
“This storyline will be a brilliant mix of the scary and the hilarious,” said an insider. Any viewers scared of rats will be hiding behind their sofas. But Norris’s attempt to bring them under control and lead them out of Weatherfield is going to be a comedy classic.”