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EastEnders' long-lost relatives and disastrous dinners keep on coming. Jim Shelley on the week in Walford

It's one of the golden rules of EastEnders.

Any sighting of a stranger - no matter how fleeting, even in the background in the market or the Queen Vic - can only mean one thing. Another long lost relative storyline is on the way.

Dexter's father Sam (centre) pops round to see his son (right) and his ex Ava (left) after walking out 20 years earlier. As you do

This week the scriptwriters didn't bother with any preamble as they usually do.

Ava's ex-/Dexter's Dad, Sam, simply turned up at their front door ­ even though he had been out of their lives for 20 years and they had only recently moved.

When Ava asked how he'd found them, it was noticeable he didn't say - ­ as if even the writers thought he wasn't up to it.

Ava and the rest of us should have known something calamitous was going to happen when she decided to make a special meal (for Dexter and Billy).

Important meals are the kiss of death in Walford.

Dexter (left) realises he's been trying to set up his muvver on a date with his dad

The only surprise was Sam's arrival happened so soon - ­ Ava (Cora's lost-long daughter & Tanya's long-lost sister) and Dexter (Cora's lost-long grandson and the Branning girls' long-lost cousin) being so new too.

Confronted with this situation, Ava did the obvious thing - dispatching Dexter to buy some ice-cream and letting Sam come in. This was on Tuesday.

He was still stood there on Thursday, listening to Ava read him the riot act.

Asking 'how can I put into words what I did ?' was probably a mistake on his part.

'Shall I try ?' Ava screamed. 'You walked out on me and our three-month old baby !'

She reminded him of his poetic farewell: 'I'm just nipping out for a pint of milk.'

He didn't even have it when he turned up.

Dexter's long-lost father, Sam, aka Jacob

She duly listed all the things that she'd done for Dexter in his absence. (Any men reading will know how these arguments go.)

The concluding statement of her case was a good one though.

He doesn't NEEEEEEEEEED a dad any more !'

When Dexter turned up, his mother who had raised him all that time and his father who had just showed up after twenty years did the obvious thing. They lied to him.

They told told him they were old friends.

Sam introduced himself to Dexter as 'Jacob' and ended up staying for some beef stew.

Dexter immediately/inexplicably wanted this total stranger to be his new best friend.

'Why would you want to hang out with an old bredah like me ?' Sam/Jacob asked, resorting to the sort of slang usually saved for Patrick.

Dexter's view was he wanted him to be mum's new best friend too -  more than Billy, which was only natural. Who wouldn't ?

Dexter liked Sam/Jacob so much he spent most of Friday's episode virtually pimping his mother out on a date with him/them.

(Bianca had also had the idea of a secret blind date with her muvver - ­ not with Sam/Jacob but with Masood. It's a ploy that is a monthly occurrence in Albert Square.)

'They get on like a house on fire,' Dex told Jay and Abi. 'The trouble is, I don't know how to get it to the next level. If I start suggesting candlelit dinners, mum's gonna know something's up.'

Well sort of, yes - considering she'd spent 20 years hating his guts.

'And where's my pint of milk ?!' Ava welcomes back Sam, twenty years after he just nipped down to the shops

Luckily, he had Abi to help out and prove she was almost as bright as he was.

'You've got to keep it simple,' she said.

You could see the cogs visibly turning in her head before she plumped for the inevitable idea (altogether now): 'how about a drink in The Vic ?'

As if the sight of poor Dexter being nice to the father he had never known wasn't cruel enough, the writers couldn't resist adding insult to injury.

'Mum hated my dad for walking out on us,' he told his friends, justifying wanting to set her up with a man he had only just met.

'But she loved him once. I just want that for her again. But with a good man this time.'

That's irony you see. From the mouths of babes and so on.

Ava stops Dexter's father Sam from starting to look through the twenty years' worth of photos he's missed of his son's life

When Sam/Jacob's ingenious name change plan was exposed, Dexter was perplexed and then devastated.

'Your name's Sam ?! You're him ?!'

He then did the obvious thing and blamed his mum.

The rest of the week was quite moderate, by EastEnders' standards.

It started with Michael kicking off when he saw a young woman he didn't know looking after his daughter.

'This is Scarlett's new nanny,' explained Janine. 'Idiot.'

Alice wins her job back looking after Scarlett, the totally well-adjusted spawn of Michael and Juneeeeeeeeeen

A funny name for a nanny but there you go.

Michael was furious about not being able to see her. (Scarlett that is, not 'Idiot'.)

Alice reassured him that Janine - or 'Juneeeeeeeeeen' as her dad had her christened, would change her mind.

'That's a rubbish idea !' he carped in that weird way he has (about everything). 'It's... vague.'

By the end of the week, Alice was Scarlett's nanny again.

'You have to think of Janine as a predator,' Michael advised. 'The perfect killing machine.'

Somewhat paranoid but still.

Meanwhile Kirsty's masterplan to pretend to Max that she's pregnant was coming along nicely.

She told him she had been for a scan.

'Did you get one of them picture things ?' he asked sensitively.

Presumably she will end up giving birth to a large cushion.

Max is made up that Kirsty has had 'one of them picture things' (a scan) taken of the cushion she plans to give birth to

Denise's massively unlikely (not to say unfair) 'romance' with Ian continued ­ with an increasingly alarming amount of Innuendo.

'What are you doing here ?' Kim asked finding Denise at home, having lunch.

'I thought I'd come home for a change. I hate sitting in that back room at work, smelling damp,' Denise said happily.

You could always have a shower.

'It it hot in here ?' No, not really. Denise's improbable, frankly unwatchable 'romance' with Ian reaches the building site of his new restaurant

Inevitably, Sam/Jacob was staying at the B&B.

'I told him we generally don't serve lunches but whatever the guests require you'd be happy to bend over backwards to provide,' Denise told Kim to wind her up. Mind you, she probably would.

Meals and eating featured heavily in the rest of the week's EastEnders' 'action.'

Jean wows Ian with her audition to be the sous chef at his new restaurant with her speciality - raw asparagus, uncooked potatoes and bacon

Jean auditioned for and secured the prestigious job of 'sous chef at The Square' by making Ian and his kids her 'Chicken Surprise' - ­ the surprise being that it was actually edible.

Jean had stressed her 'creative' side.

'I think Ian thinks I'm John Lennon to his McCartney,' she explained, ­ her sanity clearly totally restored.

Sharon also had one of those big 'faaaaaaamily' meals that are only a recipe for disaster (ho-ho).

You'd think she would have learned her lesson from Peggy.

Sharon (fourth on the left) risks everything by having a dinner party and serving fish

What the occasion was exactly eluded me, although I do know that a) Sharon isn't really renowned for her cooking and b) she was cooking fish.

I know this because Alfie and the other guests commented on it, as if it represented a potentially fatal threat to their usual diet of cigarettes, alcohol, and fry-ups at the caff.

'Would YOU give your fella fish ?!' Shirley sneered to Kirsty.

Shirley had been in good form all week.

'Do you think I stink ?' Billy asked her.

'No more than usual,' Shirley said.

Happy days.

  More... Ronnie Mitchell's out of prison and back in Walford... but will Jack ever forgive her? Samantha Womack's controversial return to EastEnders SOAP WATCH: Jaci Stephens gives us the ultimate insight into the week's soaps

Shirley duly turned up like a really scary scarecrow.

'Look at you,' she carped at Sharon. 'Not a hair out of place.'

'I got a blow dry earlier,' Sharon said.

'Yeah I bet you did.'

Come again ?!

'There must be a crack in such a perfect surface,' Shirley continued to bait her. Yes, talking ­ about Sharon.

I guess that's what alcohol can do to the brain. Or the eyesight.

Shirley turns up at Sharon's dinner thinking it was 'bring a bottle' only to realise to her horror that it's fish

Lola had gone to the dinner to prove Sharon was 'off her 'ead' on pills, and had her suspicions confirmed when Sharon nearly fell over.

'It's the heels,' Shar' claimed. 'These are four inches. I was kidding myself in the shop that I could handle them.'

That the heels could handle the weight more like.

As soon as Sharon insisted she had given the pills up and pleaded: 'do you believe me ?' and Lola sobbed that she did and they hugged, then we knew that she was still taking the drugs.

Either that, or we should be for watching it.

I don't know if they were diet pills, or pills to help her be less orange, but sure enough, by the end of the episode, she was reaching for the secret stash in her coat.

Sharon reaches for the pills she needs to help her cope with living with Phil

As for Sam/Jacob, in the two episodes since his arrival, he's already stepped in to help Ian and fix his plaster work for him.

Whether he could the same for Sharon though must remain doubtful.

He is also halfway to copping off with Kim ­ although, the latter is not admittedly that difficult.

No doubt in the weeks ahead he will follow the inevitable trajectory of all nasty Long Lost Relatives.

Namely, gradual redemption followed by sainthood followed by snogging his ex-, just before the dramatic 'dum-dums' at the end of the episode.

After all, what's 20 years between friends ? Or, in EastEnders' case, between enemies ?












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