This year’s Coronation Street festive celebrations will be extra special as Fiz Stape and Tyrone Dobbs are set to tie the knot right on Christmas Day.
However, it won’t be as smooth as Tyrone (Alan Halsall) would have hoped, with a little drama risking to push back the ceremony.
After two decades, the couple are set to walk down the aisle following their recent engagement. Tyrone intends to surprise Fiz (Jennie McAlpine) with a secret wedding on Christmas, enlisting the help of family and friends to keep the bride in the dark.
“He now knows after all the things he’s been through – and it’s taken a while for him to realise – but he now realises what he wants. He wants his family unit that he’s never had and he wants Fiz and he loves Fiz. And he wants all that to happen quickly,” Halsall explained.
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Tyrone may mean well, but not telling Fiz the truth could result in disaster.
“And of course in his mind nothing can go wrong so therefore he just plans it all off the cuff, not telling Fiz. He doesn’t think of any eventuality that it won’t go perfectly to his plan,” the actor said.
“It’s all in good spirit – he just wants the best and wants Fiz to have that great day that he thinks she deserves but of course he hasn’t thought it through very well.”
Meanwhile, Fiz is “totally clueless”, McAlpine said, though the character might not appreciate Tyrone’s lack of transparency about their own wedding.
“Even when Fiz says ‘It’s all about the marriage,’ still she wants to choose her own dress, surely, and have a little bit of input,” the soap star said.
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In an attempt to hide his wedding plans from Fiz, Tyrone suggests they should have a low-key Christmas Day, staying in and having pizza. This enrages Fiz, who goes out to buy a turkey and leaves her phone behind.
“She storms off, saying, ‘If you want to eat pizza, eat pizza. I’m having a turkey,’” McAlpine said.
“She goes to try and find a turkey in the middle of nowhere on a country lane and she’s not very good at driving. The car stops working, she hasn’t got her mobile phone and she’s in the middle of nowhere.”
Will Fiz get back in time for the wedding she doesn’t know it’s happening? Tyrone, understandably, panics once he realises she’s gone.
“He hasn’t thought about this, that’s the point,” Halsall said.
“He clearly thought that everything was going to go really smoothly and exactly how he planned and we all know that’s not the case. He walks into an empty room and just a note there, Fiz has gone and he can’t get hold of her on the phone and he thinks ‘What do I do next? I’ve got people giving up their Christmas Day to spend it with us. What’s going to happen? Are we going to get married in time?’
“Everything’s rushing through his head because he hasn’t thought about any eventuality other than it all going exactly how he wanted it to.”
Hopefully, a convenient, last-minute resolution will help the two lovebirds finally say ‘I do’.
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