Jenny Connor took quite the risk (Picture: ITV)
The following article contains spoilers from an episode of Coronation Street that hasn’t aired on ITV1 yet, but can be viewed on ITVX.

Plans were afoot in Monday (September 29)’s episode of Coronation Street to get Jenny Connor (Sally Ann Matthews) and George Shuttleworth (Tony Maudsley) paired up at last, at a speed dating event at the Rovers.

We’ve seen over the past weeks that Jenny has taken quite a shine to the dapper funeral director ever since he helped her out with a plumbing problem at the Kabin.

It looked like the perfect match, too. George is newly single after previous partner Eileen Grimshaw (Sue Cleaver) left him to go to Thailand, in the run-up to which move she decided that George didn’t quite float her boat romantically-speaking.

It’s true that if you’re looking for excitement, George is probably not your man. But if you want steady and reliable, he very much is, and these are exactly the qualities that Jenny needs right now, what with her last relationship turning out to be a catfish and the one before that having been murdered.

The arrival of Christina Boyd (Amy Robbins) threw a spanner in the works, though, as Jenny’s enemy quickly became interested in George herself. In fact in this episode it turned out that George and Christina had quite the shared history, having once almost gone on a blind date together in their youth.

Jenny has been feeling jealous of George and Christina’s connection (Picture: ITV)
He stood her up, opting to go to the wrestling instead. ‘Imagine if I had turned up, what might have been?’ he mused.

George’s sister Glenda (Jodie Prenger) is no fan of Christina’s, so she set about trying to rig a speed-dating event so that George would be matched with Jenny.

This plan was working, until Jenny had a call from Rita (Barbara Knox) to say she’d had a fall. Jenny had to dash off to help her.

The fall turned out to be fairly trivial and Rita was just a little bit shaken up. But when Jenny failed to return to the Rovers, George started to get worried about Rita. He made his excuses to Christina and headed off to Rita’s flat with flowers.

Sally Ann Matthews will soon leave her role as Jenny Connor (Picture: ITV)
We saw Jenny sweeping up outside the Kabin. She was crying, and casting glances across to the pub where she assumed George was getting cosy with Christina.

Then into this Cinderella scene stepped Prince Charming George, still bearing a bouquet because he hadn’t got an answer when he knocked on Rita’s door. The stage looked set for a romantic moment in which George realised that Jenny was really the woman for him.

He was concerned to see Jenny crying. She covered her tears by telling him she was upset about Rita.

The fall she’d had was worse than they initially thought, she said. She’d had to have a scan, and the results were very bad. George didn’t want to pry into just how bad, but he gave Jenny a comforting hug – which Christina, leaving the pub at that moment, spotted.

There is a slim chance that Jenny was telling the truth and poor Rita really is seriously ill – but she certainly didn’t look it earlier and Barbara Knox is showing no signs of wanting to retire from the show.  Rita is not going to be best pleased to discover that Jenny has been lying about her health to George. Could this cause a rift between the two old friends?