One of soap’s most-asked questions, second only to: "Who’s the dad?". Easy to spot thanks to its marked lack of variation – never chump, sap or sucker, always mug. Intended as a streetwise warning that the speaker won’t be taken for a ride, but more fun read as the neurotic legacy of some childhood incident, possibly at the hands of a crockery fetishist.
This colloquial pick-me-up for the romantically insecure is pretty much a Coronation Street exclusive. Since creeping in a few years back it’s spread like verbal knotweed. Perhaps the justification is that they’re planning a necrophilia storyline with one hell of a lot of foreshadowing. Dare to dream!
A line that, for some reason, works better when the person saying it is fiddling about with a dead or dying body. Most frequently encountered in medisoaps such as Casualty or Holby as a surgeon stumbles into theatre. His colleague, not so much as glancing up from the gently pulsing horror of the patient’s chest cavity, floors our tardy-arriver with this scalpel-sharp sarcastic put-down. Also found in police dramas, where the cop arrives late to that little crime scene marquee and is similarly upbraided by Dr A Quirky-Pathologist.
Often used in soap, despite the fact no one in the history of recorded speech has ever said it. (How we crave someone to reply: "the ‘nnn’ bit. What does the ‘nnn’ bit mean?"). It’s a line that lends itself to variation, although some writers are yet to recognise that the more complicated the execution, the more dilute the effect. "Which part of dual polarisation interferometry don’t you understand?", for instance, comes across as helpful rather than withering. I think they done that one in Hollyoaks.
A child or lover goes missing. Their parent or partner frantically combs the square/street/village, across which we suddenly see the back of a head vaguely resembling that of the missing, in that they both have hair. Then comes the hand on the shoulder, the … What?! By Devendra Alahan’s hair dye, it’s not them! But I was 900% certain it would be the missing person! Instead the bereft parent or partner is confronted by the alarmed expression of a complete stranger. This stranger, incidentally, is always holding the hand of an extra playing their actual parent or partner. Who always throws our desperate character the shocked yet contemptuous scowl of a person having their piles marinaded in chilli and lime while watching a poo do a song and dance routine.
Join me in a verbal dance as old as the pyramids. "I know it’s none of my business," offers beta character, tentatively, "but you really ought to talk to her." Alpha character considers this: "You’re right." What’s this? Stubborn and testy alpha, accepting advice? But wait – alpha hadn’t finished his sentence! Viewers, in your kitchens and living rooms around the nation, join in unison as alpha turns the whole exchange on its head with dreary, tidal predictability:
Honestly, soap, did you really think you’d suckered me with that old one? Have I got ‘mug’ tattooed on my forehead?
Harry Hill’s TV Burp returns to ITV1 this Saturday, 7.10pm
Soap dialogue: a spotter's guide – The Guardian
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