Home Top

Buckingham Palace fury as pictures emerge from 80 years ago of seven-year-old Queen Elizabeth ll and the Queen Mother being taught a Nazi salute by uncle Edward VIII in private film at Balmoral
Terrified motorists abandon their cars and run for their lives as raging wildfires blow across California highway and torch EVERYTHING in their path
The salary you need to earn to buy a home in 27 major US cities (and if you want to buy in San Francisco you'll need more than $140,000 a year)
Jennifer Aniston denies bombshell claim from Matt LeBlanc's father that the pair had an affair while starring together on Friends
Aerial views of Tom Cruise's $50m Scientology TV studios: Bigger than all major Hollywood sets and 'built by 50-cent an hour Sea Org recruits' the Church boasts its network will 'reach everyone on earth'
Girl, 12, found murdered in a Utah field hours after 'being lured from her house at midnight by 15-year-old neighborhood boy'
Family and supporters of Eric Garner take to the streets to mark one year since he was killed by New York City cop who put him in banned chokehold
REVEALED: Mexico says America sent an extradition request for El Chapo THREE WEEKS before his escape
'Anything that happens twice, will happen a third time!' Mexico's jailbreak drugs lord El Chapo taunts police on Twitter boasting even if he's caught, he'll escape again
'Hon, I need you to answer me please': Girlfriend shares tragic last texts from boyfriend killed in Chattanooga as the bodies of the four slain Marines are taken in procession to Dover, Delaware
REVEALED: Marine murderer lost his job as a nuclear engineer for Ohio company after TEN DAYS for failing the background security check in 2013
EXCLUSIVE: Muslim Marine murderer's father 'sexually assaulted wife and beat his son' - and wanted to take second wife 'because it was allowed under Islamic law'
ISIS film a CHILD carrying out a beheading for the first time: 'Cub of the Caliphate' is the first seen executing a prisoner by decapitation as the terror group increasingly use boys to kill
Yazidi girls raped five times a day by sadistic ISIS fighters who burned them with cigarettes before letting six more men abuse them at once: Sex slaves reveal the hell they endured before escaping to UK
EXCLUSIVE: Get me to the Greek! Obama takes his daughters to $33K-a-head Democrat fundraiser hosted by shipping magnate George Logothetis in New York before going for an Italian downtown
EXCLUSIVE: 'I couldn't help but think about all that she must have dreamed for her child.' Whitney Houston's friend Tyler Perry pays a visit to Bobbi Kristina in hospice
Woman who was 'slut shamed' after her public threesome at Calgary Stampede went viral says she is has no regrets - in video seen by 3.4million
Arizona mother is sentenced to life without parole for murdering daughter, 5, putting her body in a suitcase and dumping it in neighboring city
Detroit mom who killed her two children and put them in freezer sentenced to life in prison with no possibility of parole
Husband films pregnant wife calmly giving birth AND delivering a 10lb baby in the car as they rush to hospital
How Instagram and Twitter HID the hash tag #CaitlynJenner during the ESPYs to stop negative comments
'Firemen had to rescue me from the side of the freeway!' People confess their most embarrassing drunken behavior in cringe-worthy online thread
EXCLUSIVE: Smile of the cop who choked Eric Garner. NYPD officer is still under 24-hour guard a year to the day since death which set off race storm
EXCLUSIVE: America's World Cup soccer winning women would beat the MEN - says a man! Landon Donovan calls for ultimate play-off and Alex Morgan says: 'Bring it on.'

EastEnders: Cockney Keystone Cops arrest Ben Mitchell for murdering Lucy Beale after sick funeral parlour sex scene, by JIM SHELLEY

Published: 15:31 EST, 17 July 2015 | Updated: 19:23 EST, 17 July 2015

View
comments

In EastEnders it was a busy night for Ben Mitchell.

Phil’s son was arrested for murder having been chased round the Square by the Cockney Keystone Cops of Walford CID who only caught up with him because Ben was shagged out from having sex at the local undertakers in the company of a corpse.

No not with her. And not with his girlfriend Abi either. With Paul Coker, the hairdresser who was doing the poor (dead) lady’s hair. And you thought your life was complicated.

Scroll down for video

Trying and failing to escape from the police: Ben Mitchell (Harry Reid) does his best to hide from police, but is eventually arrested for Lucy Beale's murder

The victim wasn’t the person lying in the coffin - Mrs Birch, the unwitting, unseeing, voyeur to Ben and Paul’s frolicking/debauchery.

Ben was accused of killing Lucy Beale (daughter of Ian, snooty estate agent, and human cat) and of supposedly being a criminal mastermind by EastEnders’ answer to Cagney & Lacey (DI Samanffa Keeble and DCI Jill Marsden). They stormed the Square with their token male colleague, a scruffy Celt with designer stubble who looks like Aston Villa manager, the super-smug Tim Sherwood.

Given that the crime was committed some 15 months ago, the swoop by Walford’s finest (and only) detectives was long overdue and made for gratifying viewing.

Unfortunately for Ben, he was a bit tired following his extra-curricular activities earlier that day...

Never mind that Ben had nothing whatsoever to do with her death, it was good to see Justice being done.

Ben has long held the title of Most Unpleasant Individual in EastEnders, a highly sought-after honour with practically every character a contender.

Ben is in a league of his own though, thanks to an ugly, joyless, bitterness that is unrelenting and becomes more unpleasant each time Ben has a head transplant. (Only 19, he has had five since he joined the series.)

His current combination of twisted vitriol, sexually repressed self-loathing, and heavy-rimmed spectacles is the worst yet – like a cross between a teenage Ronnie Kray and Peter Mandelson. Just horrible.

There is a new murder suspect on the square in Eastenders

Crafty: Jane Beale has gone to extreme lengths to cover up her son Bobby's crime

The man who murdered Shirley’s huge friend Heather may not have done the same to Lucy, but the important thing is to get Ben off the streets, off our screens, and back in prison.

So we should all support Jane’s plan to protect Bobby ‘Damian’ Beale and sacrifice Ben - by framing him, planting Lucy’s mobile phone and wallet which she has (intelligently) been hiding under the Beales’ living room floorboards all this time.

As luck would have it, the rozzers were looking for evidence against Ben searching Phil’s ‘arse’ (as he gruffly calls his ‘ouse).

Jane really is Walford’s criminal mastermind. She disposed of Lucy’s body in the woods without being seen and without Bobby even suspecting that he had killed her. She seems to have persuaded him it was just a coincidence that Lucy had been murdered shortly after he had brained his sister with a jewellery box.

Awkward: Ben and Paul don't let the matter of a corpse in the room get in the way of their unbridled passion

She really is wasted working in the caff or drinking vodka in Waterloo Road.

Up against such Machiavellian feminine wiles, Ben doesn’t stand a chance.

Just look at the way Paul Coker has got Ben wrapped round his little finger (as it were).

He enticed Ben over to the undertakers Coker & Sons (‘without the Sons’, as Les pointed out) in broad daylight flicking his texting finger to have a wing-ding in the Chapel of Rest alongside Mrs Birch (RIP) without Ben (or Mrs Birch) batting an eyelid.

People may say Ben is ‘sexually repressed’ or ‘confused about his sexuality’ but no one can say he’s not open-minded.

Of course, the portrayal of gay people as being SO lacking in scruples or so sex-crazed/depraved is thoroughly offensive - as is the notion that the only two gay males in Walford would even like each other, let alone be so consumed by lust.

EastEnders’ reductive, archaic views about gay people really are shocking.

Ben didn’t seem to mind of course. After all he did get to snog Paul Coker, the beatific David Essex lookalike who dresses like a member of Big Country.

Nice place to hide! Ben ended up in his pants hiding under a dead person... as you do

On the down side, it did mean we had to see Ben in his pants when their coitus was interruptus by Paul’s grandparents listening at the door to see if Paul was still styling the corpse’s hair.

‘Best knock first. I wouldn’t want to put him off his stroke,’ suggested Les Coker, in the manner of Kenneth Williams starring in Carry On Funeral Director. ‘I think he must be finishing off.’

The sound of viewers all over the country choking on their chips could have caused an earthquake. It was the 1970s all over again.

Ben was even locked in with the body before escaping, only to go from Paul’s clutches into DCI Marsden’s.

Phil’s ‘brief’ (the legendary Ritchie Scott) had warned him that she had ‘heard a whisper’ that ‘the filth’ were going to be ‘sniffing round the Square.’

And so it proved.

Worried: Phil Mitchell was warned by his brief Ritchie Scott that the police would be 'sniffing around the square'

Having carted Ben away, hopefully CSI: Walford will round up some of the other youngsters, starting with Denny obviously - if they can find him. (Since Sharon’s beloved furry cannibal bit another kid at school and she lamped him, Denny has understandably made himself scarce.)

Liam and Abi could disappear for a stretch inside too.

The police’s reluctance to approach Bobby ‘Damian’ Beale is understandable, given his spooky supernatural powers.

Every time ‘Damian’ suddenly, silently, popped up in a doorway eavesdropping on, or interrupting, a conversation between Jane and Ian, it gave you the chills - especially eerie expressions of his fears about a killer being on the loose like: ‘I just want to feel safe.’

No wonder Ian was such a mess – what with Cindy going off the deep end and AWOL at the drop of a hat and the police asking where Bobby was.

‘I just don’t want his little ears to hear anything that would upset him’, explained DI Keeble, who is almost as sinister than Bobby.

No fan: Sharon mused that Ben could be the suspect for Lucy's murder

Sharon of course was quite keen on the idea of Ben being the prime suspect for Lucy’s murder.

‘It wouldn’t be the first time, would it?’ she pointed out to Ian, diplomatically. ‘It wouldn’t be the first time he’d tried to cover it up either.’

‘Is that right – did Ben do something to Lucy?’ leapt in ‘Damian’, his demon sixth sense kicking in.

‘Ben loved Lucy, we all did,’ Cindy deflected.

‘He wouldn’t have done anything to Lucy,’ Jane reassured her son/lied.

But Bobby was not to be deterred.

‘Someone did!’ he reiterated. ‘I just want to know who’' - leaving the viewers shouting at the screen: ‘IT WAS YOU! YOU DID, YOU CREEPY LITTLE WEIRDO!’

In the dark: Bobby declared he was desperate to know who killed Lucy... not realising it was actually himself

How could he say that? How could he not now? Was he so heavily in denial, or just thick?

And doesn’t he watch ‘EastEnders’?

Will Jane frame Ben? It remains to be seen, as do 10 other questions arising from this week’s episodes.

1. Would a man with no job and no dole money like Sex-Mad Max go to the cafe across the road from his house and pay for a fried egg sandwich when he could just have one at home?

2. Why did Sex-Mad Max buy ‘Triple Cooked Chips’ from the Minute Mart to put in the oven at home instead of just buying fresh ones from ‘The Chippy’?

3. Are girls like Cindy still in danger from City boys keeping the spirit of the 80s alive, driving around the wine bars of Shoreditch looking like Martin and Gary Kemp from Spandau Ballet?

Cover up: Ian has been feeling the strain of covering up his son Bobby murdering his own daughter

4. Do the police really treat arresting someone for murder like a kids’ game as DCI Marsden did, telling Phil: ‘you’ve got one more minute. Then all your neighbours will see your front door come down...10 seconds, 5 seconds...’ As if he was refusing to brush his teeth or they were playing hide and seek?

5. Would Phil Mitchell really be such a connoisseur about custard creams?

6. Isn’t he more of a chocolate digestives man?

7. There are worrying signs that Martin Fowler is growing a moustache. Will the giant sex-pest prove more committed to this idea than he is to the prospect of having a ‘bay-bay’ with Stacey?

8. Dr. Martin Fowler: bipolar disorder specialist – who knew? When did Martin become such an expert in this field – urging Stacey ‘I don’t think you’re ready for a new baby to take on’ when only a few days ago he told her ‘when I think of ‘bipolar’, all I think is of people going off their rocker’? Maybe he’s done an Open University course.

9. Can Sharon beat her new Personal Best – taking only 30 seconds to bring the subject of Lucy’s death round to herself? ‘You’re still in shock,’ she suggested. ‘It’s like me and Dennis, all it takes is one little trigger.’ No one cares.

10. Should Danny Dyer have his own subtitles to translate the obscure Cockney phrases he elbows into his dialogue, terms such as complaining about the baby Dean Junior doing ‘a pony’ (a pony & trap = a crap) or calling Lee ‘a string’ (a string vest = a pest)?