Write the last episode of Gordon and Tony, the soap

On the day that the Prime Minister admits he's been living in a soap opera, we give you the story so far...

Gordon and Tony have been neighbours for almost nine years, by their own reckoning the most successful partnership in the history of the Street. Tony's the nice one - disarmingly charming and a bit of a hit with the women. Gordon's smarter, good at figures, the deep one.

But although Tony's got the nicest house on the Street, he's always dropped hints that that one day he'll hand the keys over to Gordon, once the kids are safely in local schools and the wife has earned enough money to pay off the whopping mortgage on their townhouse.

Of course, like any neighbours, they've had their ups and downs, little spats blown up out of all proportion by the newspapers - like the time that Tony brought that man with the quiff in to run his third election campaign only to find himself joined at the hip with Gordon anyway for the next six weeks. There were never any cracks that Alistair, their wily exterior decorator, couldn't gloss over.

But any good soap opera needs a bit of drama and after all those years of will-he or won't-he storylines, the viewers started to get a bit bored. It was still the only show in town, but the ratings were dropping off. Tony's tennis partner told him it was increasingly difficult to get the advertisers on board without making rash promises.

Then the scriptwriters had a brainwave. They asked themselves, 'Why do we need Gordon? What's he for?' And in the very next episode, up sprung Dave, young, posh, slimily good-looking and helpful. Very helpful. No sooner had he joined the cast than he was offering to sort out Tony's little problem with Ruth. Pretty soon he was offering to help him sort out Gordon too.

So what does Gordon do? No brown studies for him. He gets his teeth cleaned and comes out smiling! I'm not bothered by that smarmy Tory Tony toff - I've got an economy to run. I'm going to put flags on every lawn and help England win us the World Cup.

And of course, he's got Tony backing him all the way, hasn't he? Isn't that what neighbours are for?

Over to you - what happened next?

Comments

[David Davis]

The ratings for The Perils of Politics plummet and the soap opera is axed with the prime time spot being taken over by Footballers' Wives!

[neil sullivan]

tony promises gordon he will leave the street very soon.
he tells gordon he needs to get some experience of the world outside of scotland. gordon visits far off places like france and germany.
while he is away, tony evicts gordon and puts peter mandelson into no 11.tony changes mind and says he will stay forever -or at least until the nhs is fixed( forever really)
gordon runs away and sets up a new party-old labour.
at the next general election old and new labour are crushed.
tony runs for us president ( and wins) and gordon shoots alastair campbellin a tantrum. gordon spends rest of his life in wormwood scrubs

[Mark]

Gordon meets his old flame, Prudence, but finds that she's now heavily in debt. She exerts a strange fascination for him - and even the young upstart Dave starts to speak well of her. But Tony tells Gordon this is no time for Prudence.

They fall out over Budget the dog. Tony wants a larger one, Gordon and Prudence a more economical one. But Tony wants to impress the neighbours with a big one, and tells everyone what he intends to do. Gordon is livid. They argue in an episode called 'Behind the Scenes'. (No journalists actually see it, but a lot write about it).

Gordon can take no more. He starts to say that Tony shouldn't have the final say about Budget - or anything else. His friends in Tony's Wednesday Club start to mutter darkly about Tony and his lack of regard for Prudence and Budget. Gordon announces mysteriously that he, by contrast with Tony, lives by the Golden Rule.

But what finally changes things is when Tony's friend, George, rides into another town, shooting up the place and generally misbehaving. Tony helps George out and his friends in the Wednesday Club disown him and tell him he can't be their club president anymore. They ask Gordon to take over and he does.

It is then that Gordon splits with Prudence and ignores Budget. Tony becomes something very well paid in the city. Dave moves in with Prudence, but then she leaves saying he doesn't understand her. Gordon has a smaller group of friends to talk to after the neighbourhood is asked what it thinks, and Dave loses his job - blaming it on Prudence.

Budget the dog gets a knighthood after paying Gordon in Winalot.