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We have some very exciting news for you all. After tomorrow night's episode Pamela Byrne, aka Hayley, will be joining us right here for a live chat. Get your questions in right now and join Pamela from 9-10pm. You can also join in the discussion on or using #askRiverCity.

...Or so Raymond thought. But the lovable landlord of our favourite local found himself properly in the mud this week. Enemies were kept close while friends were stabbed in the back and now we've got Shady Sean and his equally shady cronies hanging around the Ship all day and all night! Poor Raymond. By the end of the day, even Jimmy was done with his bezzie mate when Raymond broke the cardinal rule of Bro-Code - never ban your mate from your bar!

Mind you, he probably didn't really help matters by going all Raging-Bull-De-Niro on us! He stormed round to Lenny's, thumping his chest with passion and pride (proving too much for his 40s-style detective Dictaphone) and then chucked out poor contrite Jimmy with all the pomp and bombast of Paul Vitti in Analyze This!

He even had a handle on the labyrinthine mind games of the Shieldinch Don. The Ship's been ransacked but he's not going to report it to the Police, cause that's what Lenny wants him to do, so Lenny must have a plan that he'll cleverly outwit by not doing the thing that Lenny seems to want him to do. Aha!........eh?

Best be leaving it to the real gangsters, Raymondo. And unfortunately, that's exactly what happened! We thought it was too good to be true when we saw Sean actually being....pleasant? Nice? Polite? And we were right! It was all a ploy to get Raymond in Sean's manky pocket. But Gabes?! What on earth were you doing?! Hands up if you were yelling at your TV in horror when Gabes lied through his teeth and stuck up for Sean? Immediately delivered, discounted booze with no money upfront, Raymond? You don't have to have a good nose to smell that this was a dodgy prawn in your curry. Even Stevie could see this was not shaping up to be a great situation and got the penny to finally drop.

Gabes himself did not look happy about it but did he really need to take it out on poor Leyla? We had high hopes for a rekindled romance for The Geyla when she invited Gabes round for dinner. But after being rejected so coldly, Leyla's seems like she's fallen off of the wagon big time and the only dinners she'll be having in a while are going to be liquid. How long before the kids realise that her early nights are actually binges in disguise?

Elsewhere, friendships were being tested over at No. 18 when Robbie took advantage of his Special Robbie Discount to buy the salon on the cheap. But he can't do it alone, and you can always rely on Good Old Deek to save the day. But he hadn't reckoned on the business acumen and controlling powers of Will. Poor Deek didn't see it coming at all. And though we love Will and Robbie together, we have to say that Deek was speaking some pretty uncomfortable home truths. Hmm, Robbie, you might want to watch that one and his patronising couch-pats.

Next Week: Raymond fights back! But will the exterminators clear the rat in his roost? And it looks like Leyla's drinking is catching up with her.

Quote of the week:
Robbie: You like me, don't you?
Will: Robbie, everybody likes you. I love you.
Robbie: Well, that's good.
Will: Isn't it.

It's been a bittersweet few weeks for Wee Bob. Excited about prospective baby-ness (despite Stella's intensive procreation schedule), the pair overcame that rough patch when it turned out Stella was a healthy baby-making machine. Horrible then for Bob to discover that he is, as Molly so delicately put it, firing blanks. But it's a bit more complicated than that...Bob's little fellas aren't great at swimming and once they get there, well, they're in no fit state to do the deed. Cue some heart-wrenching moments as he struggles to tell his lovely lady wife the bad news. Not even jumping the queue at the Oyster gave him a chance to reveal the truth.

Trapped in a pincer movement between Matriarchal Mullens he eventually spilled the beans to Scarlett, who with all her customary tact, proceeded to tell just about everyone who'd listen in Shieldinch. Including our Stella ... Uh oh. Devastated Bob took his anger out on anything to hand...a spanner, the car bonnet. And then, in Shieldinch's answer to Bridget Jones, Stevie. In RC's very own Hugh Grant/Colin Firth tribute, these two were only broken apart from the hair-pulling and head-locking when our fave DC stepped in to break up the fisticuffs.

Understandably devastated, it took Stella to break him out of this reverie. This, people, is true love at work. They're at their best when they're together and babies or no babies, this pair deserve a break. Come on Baby-Gods-of-Fate, make it happen!

An interesting trivia fact though - did you know Wee Bob has never been in a spaceship? Strange, but true.

Slightly closer to home (though only slightly), Brighton looms large on the horizon for our Hayley. Brighton, near London? Well, only in relation to its distance from Glasgow Hayles! Should she follow love's true dream and move with Tasty Tom down south? Give up everything in Shieldinch for a new life near the beach? YES! WHAT'S WRONG WITH YOU WOMAN?! GO! It took resident agony aunts Malcolm and Liz to kick things into focus and say 'Hayles, when it's right, it's right'. And there are some lovely cafes down there. Just sayin'. An initially devastated Robbie eventually decided to accept the inevitable and pulled out a classic from the Penguin Book of Clichés. We've all heard the classics - 'it's not you, it's me'; 'every cloud has a silver lining'. And his choice? 'Love doesn't come with a safety net'. So true. Trapeze does though, so if things with Tom don't work out maybe Hayles could consider a future in the circus?!

So, as if there wasn't enough change going on in Shieldinch this week...possibly the weirdest and most unnerving change of all was still to come. Shady Sean being...nice? Well this surely can't be right. Someone get that spaceship back down here...it's lost one of its passengers. (And we can try to get Wee Bob a ride, we like to make dreams come true.) It's always nice to bond with the local publican, but when the thing you've got in common is a shared hatred of Lenny Murdoch, it's not likely to end well. Even Gabe looked shaken by this new and frankly upsetting union. We've got bad feelings in our waters people!

Next week, Raymondo dsicovers the Ship in a terrible mess, and Robbie ponders over an offer he really shouldn't refuse!

Quote of the week:
Zinnie: Eileen put me in charge and I think you need to work.
Scarlett: Well, you carry on thinking, you need the practice.

After the traumatic events of this week's episode, it feels like a good time to take inspiration from that 20th century philosophical genius, Phoebe Buffay.

Sometimes, men love women. Sometimes, men love men.

And that's really all there is to it. But not for Paul and Ben, Shieldinch's local homophobic-pint-drinking thugs. Poor Robbie was up in court this week, faced with his nasty attackers, all smug in their cheap suits. Subjected to a right rollicking from the mean old barrister, our Robster was left feeling the cold hand of justice, as testimony from Hayles and Will got thrown out with the bath water. As Will rightly said, they wouldn't have met each other if it hadn't been for them....mmmm. We're stroking our metaphorical beards thoughtfully. Maybe Will isn't everything we hoped he'd be?

Here at RC Towers, we're beginning to wonder if Deek's worries might not be unfounded. In Robbie's darkest moments, Will could only let his anger get the better of him, pushing past Robbie and forcing him against an old rusty nail in the doorframe - health and safety first people! Will seems to have more faces than Big Ben right now - one minute playing caring cop with Robbie's friends, the next, he's denying touching a hair on pretty Robbie's head...we thought his violent streak was reserved for the likes of Shady Sean in fairly-public-places. After everything Poor Robbie's gone through, surely Will isn't turning on him too? When your fiance's more interested in chasing down dead bodies than being by your side in court, no amount of smoked salmon tartlets will smooth over those cracks. Lets just hope Will isn't about to get all Sue-Barker-with-a-bazooka on us...

Meanwhile, Leyla seems to have cleared the house of anything resembling alcohol (yes, even that old bottle of voddy hidden in her shoe). She's clearly having a bit of a struggle with this one, but still isn't ready to hold her hands up to the problem just yet. True, a quick drink after work is not the same as shooting up in an alleyway Leyla....but stashing bottles of vodka in the wardrobe and setting fire to the house is surely heading in the right direction! And was it really soda water in that glass?! We've all pulled that trick, and no one ever believes it! With Stevie and Nicole doubting her every word, will their tough love work? Or force Leyla back to where she started? To be fair, watching to make sure Leyla's not drinking might be the least of Nicole's worries. Stevie looks pretty handy with that tea towel...

Finally a bit of good news for Stella and Bob - looks like she's got the all clear on the baby-making front - phew! But they're still not preggers...so, what have they been doing wrong?! Stella's got every leaflet and sexual positions poster out there, she's timed their 'trying' to within an inch of their lives and pestered Poor Wee Bob til he broke. They can't still be in the dark about the birds and the bees?! Maybe all they need is some time, space and a bit of peace and quiet...not likely with Scarlett sneaking around making euphemistic references to sausages. If anything's going to kill the mood, it'll be that!

Next week, Bob's going to the doctor...and it's definitely not for that leg hanging off. And what's this, Tom's off down South? NOOOOOOOOOO!

Quote of the week:
Scarlett: Some folk take ages getting pregnant. Others just get up the duff before you can say 'babygrow'...

We've all done it, haven't we? Woken up and realized we'd sent that voicemail or message that we didn't mean to? Pranged that car and thought about just driving away? Danced around the living room to our favourite sexy tune getting quietly smashed all by ourselves? Yes, ok, we'll give you that - but all in the one night? Then followed by two bottles of wine with three quarters of a bottle of vodka? Leyla seems like she's really gone too far this week and is in some serious denial.

How on earth was she still standing? Her attempts to hide it from Nicole were pretty pitiful. And sneaking the bottle top off the table isn't really covering it up when she was blasting the music up full volume at 10 o'clock at night. She was also terrible at hiding the car accident as she stared intensely at Murray's damaged wagon in a public place. At the end of a very drunken day, even enabler Nicole was wavering at Leyla's mid-afternoon binge! Cleaning up your step-mum's vomit? Now that's dedication Nicole and Stevie. And after seeing Leyla sitting pounding back the vodka in floods of tears, it seems like things are going to get worse before they get better.

Speak of poor wee souls, awww, Iona. Her face was a picture when she saw her beloved Tom snatching some more kisses in the street with Hayley (though way to go guys - right in front of the mini-market is the BEST place to hide it). Even Robbie was offering to help Iona take a pop at Hayley as our two fabulous ladies fought it out over Tom. Their argument at the Ship almost looked like it was going to descend into catfight central with the poor guy sitting next to them at the bar pretending he couldn't hear a thing! But, being classy through and through, they'd barely been fighting a day before they made up. Hands up though if you were hoping for a Tom-Tug-of-War? Honest, now!

Liz and Malcolm, the couple that give us hope that true love knows no age, were being very sweet this week. Liz's admission that she's scared about Malcolm slipping away from her would have melted the hardest heart and, despite his doubts, Malcolm just couldn't let her down. With a bit of hesitation, his nifty piano skills came right back to him after just a look from Liz.

Just stray observations but who thinks "The Hungarian Clown" is the romantic film of the year? And our Deek's getting cheeky in his old age, what with cheerleaders making him 'think' and all.

Next week: Robbie has to face his attackers once more. Let's hope there'll be no more homophobic pints for them...in jail.

Quote of the week:
Murray: I don't want your money
Gabriel: You're not getting it. Bob is and you're getting your mid-life crisis tragic wagon brought back to its form glory.