Coronation Street spoilers: Simon Barlow places a child in terrifying danger as his drinking spirals further
Ever since Peter Barlow (Chris Gascoyne) left Coronation Street, his son Simon (Alex Bain) has been left feeling more and more abandoned and sorry for himself.
And, unfortunately, he’s been dealing with his misery by drinking. A lot.
It’s something that his dad was very fearful of. As an alcoholic himself, Peter was worried when he saw Simon’s reaction to a setback was to hit the bottle, and he warned him off.
Since Peter left, Simon’s drinking has got a lot worse and in upcoming episodes he’ll put Sam (Jude Riordan)’s life in danger as a result.Simon arrives for work hungover, and Nick (Ben Price) sends him home after realising he’s still drunk from the night before. Instead of going home, Simon heads for the Rovers and continues to drink.
The following day he’s hungover again and Leanne (Jane Danson) gives him the day off, but expresses her fears that he’s drinking too much. What Simon absolutely doesn’t need at this point is a party, but Bobby (Jack Carroll) decides it’ll cheer him up.
This means that on the day after the party Simon is in a terrible state after three days of drinking. And the first thing he does when he wakes up is take a swig of vodka – which is never a good sign.
When a busy Nick asks Simon to drive Sam to his chess competition, Simon is already over the limit and should refuse, but he doesn’t want Nick to know that he’s been drinking again and agrees – putting young Sam in terrible danger.
It’s not long before Simon’s erratic driving leads to him losing control of the car and they crash into a road sign.
Simon’s first thought is to save his own skin and he tells Sam to leg it before anyone else arrives on the scene. The last thing he wants is for Leanne and Nick to know how much danger he put Sam in.
With Alex Bain set to leave the show soon, Simon’s spiral into drinking is part of his exit storyline – but how will things end for Simon?
How much worse is his behaviour going to get?