Coronation Street - The Grimshaw Family Album

Monday 19 November 2007 10:00pm - 10:30pm on ITV1.

Some girls have all the luck, but Eileen Grimshaw certainly isn't one of them.
Feisty single mum Eileen arrived on Coronation Street in 2000 looking for a break, and seven years later she's still looking.

While her love life always seems to be disaster-prone, it's nothing compared to that of her two sons Todd and Jason. Both of them have been engaged to Sarah-Louise Platt, both of them have cheated on her and one of them, Todd, snogged her brother in Coronation Street's first ever gay kiss.

Eileen, 46, had her two sons by two different fathers, both of whom disappeared out of her life. Over the years she has had five marriage proposals, and never once made it down the aisle.

She moved into No. 11 Coronation Street with Todd and Jason after landing a job as radio controller at Street Cars in October 2000. Eileen loves a laugh and has good male friends in taxi boss Steve McDonald and gay knicker stitcher Sean Tully, but never seems to be able to meet the man of her dreams.

It looked like she had finally met her soulmate when she began a relationship with Les Battersby's friend Dennis Stringer but he ended up leaving her for Janice Battersby.

Then she began seeing ex-prisoner Ed Jackson, but he turned out to be another unsuitable match after he confessed to being the killer of Emily Bishop's husband Ernest.

Fling

Earlier this year she began a fling with a charmer she knew only as 'Pat', only to find he
was cheating on her… with six other women.

But it has been the love lives of her two sons which has created the biggest scandal since the arrival of the Grimshaws on Coronation Street. Model student Todd began to be distracted from his schoolwork as he started dating teenage mum Sarah-Louise Platt. Eileen was furious when he announced that he was abandoning his plans for university to settle down with Sarah and get married.

But Todd was also becoming confused about his sexuality and made a pass at Sarah's brother Nick, resulting in the Street's first gay kiss.

Eventually he began a relationship with male nurse Karl Foster, and although he broke off the affair for the sake of his by-now-pregnant fiancée Sarah and their unborn child, he finally confessed all.

Fall-out

The fall-out of his bombshell confession led to one of the Street's great catfights, between Eileen and Sarah's mum Gail Platt.

Sarah's baby was born premature and died 24 hours later in one of the Street's saddest scenes of recent years. The young mum recovered from the trauma and promptly slept with Todd's Jack-the-lad plumber brother Jason. He vowed to take his brother's place and take care of Sarah but then strayed with Rovers' barmaid Violet Wilson, creating a stormy love triangle.

Sarah won the day and seemed to have persuaded Jason to make her his wife until he got cold feet on their wedding day and jilted her by climbing out of the toilet window at the Register's Office.

Jason soon realised his mistake and plastered posters on the Street declaring his love for Sarah but it took months for him to win her back. The pair finally married on Halloween 2007, despite the best efforts of Sarah's brother, David Platt, to ruin their wedding by driving his car into the canal.

Todd, who moved to London three years ago, returned to Weatherfield for the wedding to see his brother Jason at the centre of another drama, Sarah reduced to tears and his mother in a new relationship (with chip shop owner Jerry Morton). For the Grimshaw family, nothing much ever changes.