Yahoo News The 10 Most Ridiculous Hollyoaks Storylines
Hollyoaks may not have been running as long as the likes of Coronation Street or EastEnders, but the Channel 4 soap has packed plenty into its 20-year history.
Despite airing at 6.30pm, the Channel 4 show has dealt with lots of hard-hitting storylines, from incest to paedophilia to mass murder to rape and much, much more.
But even the most die-hard of Hollyoaks fans may well agree that some of the plots have seemed a little far-fetched at times, such as when Carmel McQueen thought she had found the face of God in her potato - a storyline which ran for more than one episode.
Copyright [Lime Pictures/Channel 4]
Kevin The Alien
While the former readers of Nuts or Zoo magazines may not think finding God in a potato is that implausible, an alien landed in Hollyoaks village most certainly is.
Character Kevin Smith - played by Cameron Crighton - first rocked up in Chester in July 2010 and after befriending innocent super-geek Elliot Bevan (Garnon Davies) he tried to convince him and everyone else that he was from outer space.
While he succeeded at first, his plans were dashed when Elliot discovered Kevin’s birth certificate and found out he was in fact abandoned by his parents at birth and they were not, surprise surprise, living on another planet.
It wasn’t all bad though as Elliot landed a job with NASA and left the village, hanging his trademark hat on the beacon as he departed.
Copyright [Lime Pictures/Channel 4]
Beth And Rhys Incest
Rhys Ashworth (Andrew Moss) first came face-to-face with Beth Clement (Sinéad Moynihan) in 2007 when she accidentally fell underneath his car.
It was love at first sight for the pair and after they started dating and having sex.
However, all hell broke loose when his biological father Noel (Craig Cheetham), who he had only just found out was his real dad, died of cancer.
But the biggest shock of all came on the day of his dad’s funeral when he turned up at the church and was introduced to his half-sister by Neville (Jim Millea), Noel’s brother who Rhys had always thought was his dad, only for his half-sibling to be Beth.
Beth later died when Rhys crashed their car into a lorry.
Copyright [Lime Pictures/Channel 4]
Sienna And Dodger Incest
Hollyoaks revisited the shocking topic in 2014 - but this time with twins.
Dodger Savage (Danny Mac) and Sienna Blake (Anna Passey) met up as teenagers and lost their virginity to each other but at the time didn’t know they were related, let alone twins.
They were eventually introduced as brother and sister, but didn’t even recognise one another.
It later transpired that Sienna had a child, Nico (Persephone Swales-Dawson), who she gave up for adoption, but the youngster appeared in the village to try to track down her mother, and after doing so began to start digging about who her father was.
Many audience members thought Nico’s dad was going to be Patrick (Jeremy Sheffield), Sienna’s father, but they were left even more shocked when the mystery man turned out to be her twin brother Dodger.
Copyright [Lime Pictures/Channel 4]
Savage Serial Killer
But Dodger was not the only Savage to have a mixed up storyline in the soap.
His half-brother Will Savage (James Atherton) entered Hollyoaks as a shy, geeky guy, quite the opposite to ladies’ man and confidence king Dodger.
However, Will got bored of being a geek, turning nasty and killing twice, pushing his wife Texas Longford (Bianca Hendrickse-Spendlove) out of a window to her death on their wedding day, and drowning his mother Anna Blake (Saskia Wickham). He also faked being paralysed.
After going to prison Will returned to our screens a year later after escaping jail by faking an illness in court by starting a fire in the toilets and dressing up as a fireman, as you do.
He kidnapped Maxine Minniver (Nikki Sanderson) and Theresa McQueen (Jorgie Porter), but Dodger rescued them.
An unidentified person later injected Will with potassium chloride and he died and it wasn’t until months later that Lindsey Butterfield (Sophie Austin) aka The Gloved Hand Killer was revealed as the culprit.
Copyright [Lime Pictures/Channel 4]
Warren’s Rise From The Ashes
While Will is most certainly dead, Warren Fox (Jamie Lomas) is not, but viewers thought the soap super-villain had perished in a fire at The Loft nightclub, only for Jamie to reprise his role in 2010.
It turned out Warren had escaped the fire and fled the village. The last viewers had seen of his so-called final moments were when he was hit by a mirror and a burnt body was later found, believed to be his.
Warren recently reappeared in a trailer for the soap’s spring 2016 storylines, which culminated with him being in the shower and grinning to the camera before saying: “Aw, did you miss me?”
The clip drew comparisons to Bobby Ewing’s return to Dallas in 1986.
Copyright [Lime Pictures/Channel 4]
Clare’s Return
Clare Devine (Gemma Bissix) was among those who thought evil Warren was dead, she took him hostage in The Loft and started the fire which caused his “death”.
The soap superbitch mentally tortured her husband Max Cunningham’s (Matt Littler) son Tom and tried to kill Max for his £500,000 life insurance policy.
She was arrested for The Loft drama but somehow managed to end up in Las Vegas, where she met Mercedes McQueen (Jennifer Metcalfe) and they set about trying to extort money from Mercedes’ husband Doctor Browning (Joseph Thompson).
Clare held Mercedes hostage in a cage at a scrapyard and when she returned in 2013 she planned to blow up The Loft on Mercedes’ 30th birthday party with all her family inside.
In true Hollyoaks style, the bomb was planted in the wrong location by Sinead O'Connor (Stephanie Davis, not the singer) so it blew up a council flat instead of The Loft.
Mercedes killed Clare by pushing her in front of the on-rushing car of Dr. Browning, who had, conveniently, just escaped from prison.
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Mercedes Back From The Dead
Before killing Clare, Mercedes may have got some tips from her nemesis about how to make a dramatic comeback.
In November 2014, Mercedes was “murdered” by Grace Black (Tamara Wall), but just three months later she popped up in the village once again very much alive and we learned she had been living it up in the French Riviera.
It later transpired that Grace had in fact stabbed Mercedes but she had agreed to help Grace set up Freddie Rose (Charlie Clapham) for her murder.
Copyright [Lime Pictures/Channel 4]
Baby Swap
One of the most dramatic storylines was the baby swap plot.
Tegan Lomax found out her baby Rose was not her biological daughter in 2014 when she donated blood to the sick little one, which made her feel worse.
She later discovered her real child was Diane O'Connor (Alex Fletcher) and Tony Hutchinson’s (Nick Pickard) daughter Dee Dee but decided not to tell them.
It turned out both Tegan and Diane’s midwife Mariam Andrews (Helen Lederer) had been drunk when she helped deliver both babies back in 2013 and had somehow swapped them by mistake.
If that wasn’t enough, Tegan was battling cancer and in need of a bone marrow transplant to survive, but there were no matches.
She eventually had to come clean to Diane and Tony that their baby was hers and vice-versa, and after getting over the initial shock, Diane and Tony gave permission for Dee Dee to donate bone marrow and Tegan survived.
Copyright [David Fisher/REX/Shutterstock]
Bombhead’s Hungry Mother
Bombhead (Lee Otway) was one of Hollyoak’s most loved stars and viewers sympathised with him when he suffered a mental breakdown after the death of his mother, whose decomposing corpse he kept in his house after her death.
While she was there in body, she wasn’t in spirit but that didn’t deter the hapless chap from cooking her regular meals and doing her dry cleaning as if she were still alive.
What’s more, his best mate at the time was the ghost of his father figure, Gordon “Mr. C” Cunningham (Bernard Latham), who came back as an hallucination.
Bombhead’s mother’s body was discovered when his pal Lee Hunter (Alex Carter) went round to his house with girlfriend Stacey Foxx (Jemma Keys) to have sex, thinking the house was empty, but she sat on Bombhead’s mum!
Copyright [Steve Meddle/REX/Shutterstock]
Jamie Bulger Plot
One of the most controversial Hollyoaks storylines was one that never even got to air.
In 2009, Channel 4 were forced to scrap a plot which drew comparisons to the infamous killing of Jamie Bulger in 1993 by two 10-year-old boys, Robert Thompson and Jon Venables.
Hollyoaks bosses had planned to run a story in which two of the soap’s characters, Loretta Jones (Melissa Walton) and friend Chrissy (Amber Hodgkiss), would admit they killed a girl when they were 12 years old.
After hearing about the plot, Denise Fergus, Jamie’s mum, attended a private screening of the episodes and said they would cause her real upset if broadcast.
Hollyoaks scrapped the storyline and the character of Chrissy never appeared on the show.
