Next month marks 10 years since the much-missed Tina McIntyre (Michelle Keegan) was pushed off the builder’s yard balcony in Coronation Street, but this week she’s been spotted lurking on set…
Can you believe it’s been TEN whole years?
Long-term viewers of the ITV soap will of course remember that it was Rob Donovan (Marc Baylis) who was responsible for her death.
Michelle played barmaid Tina for six years and was later joined by her dad Joe (Reece Dinsdale), who soon became Gail Platt’s (Helen Worth) fourth husband.
During her time on the street, she was in a relationship with David Platt (Jack P Shepherd) and blamed Gail when her dad died faking his own death in a boating incident.
She was also surrogate for Gary Windass (Mikey North) and Izzy Armstrong (Cherylee Houston) and had relationships with a string of Weatherfield men – including married Peter Barlow (Chris Gascoyne).
A number of key suspects were unveiled ahead of the shocking murder episode; Carla Connor (Alison King), Rob, Peter and his sister Tracy Barlow (Kate Ford).
On the evening of her Rob’s engagement party to Tracy, Tina planned to run away with Peter, which was halted when his wife Carla announced her pregnancy in the Rovers.
When Rob called round to the builder’s yard flat to check on Tina, she told him about her plan to report his dodgy dealings in second-hand shop Barlow’s Buys to the police and reveal her affair with Peter.
During the heated confrontation, the pair ended up on the builder’s yard balcony and within minutes she’s been pushed off onto the cobbles below.
Fearing she would still live to reveal his dastardly act, Rob then proceeded to brutally bludgeon her over the head with a metal pole to silence her once and for all.
However, in a recent Instagram post, actor Calum Lill, who plays Joel Deering, was taken aback to see her in the corridors of Weatherfield General Hospital.
Sharing a hilarious video, Calum can be seen waiting to film a scene when he glances to his right and notices a magazine featuring Michelle emblazoned across the front cover.
Captioning it ‘Tina’s alive?’, he then added: ‘Couldn’t believe what I saw at Weatherfield General the other day. Sometimes I feel like I’m in the Truman show. Or some kind of show anyway.’
The magazine’s appearance on the show’s 7.7 acre production base in Trafford Park, Greater Manchester, is a bit of an anomaly as usually, real front covers are replaced by the fictional Hiya! or Chit Chat.
This means there’s little chance of a character popping into The Kabin for a quarter of sherbet lemons and spotting themselves across the shelves.
So whilst Tina may not be returning to the cobbled street anytime soon, it should be noted that stranger things have happened in soapland.
Given Rob’s son Bobby Crawford (Jack Carroll) now lives on the Street, we could see the plot revisited in the future.
