THIS isn’t quite the wedding day that Rita Sullivan imagined – being held hostage by a drugdealing thug while a friend tries to negotiate her release.

Bridegroom Dennis Tanner is left standing at the altar waiting for his bride, the Queen of the Kabin, in Coronation Street (ITV1).

Perhaps he – and we – shouldn’t be so surprised by this odd turn of events as Rita has always had “man trouble”. Relationships for Rita have never been straightforward. If only she’d pursued Ken Barlow, her son Terry’s teacher, after taking a fancy to him on her arrival in the street nearly four decades ago.

Alas, she turned her back on Ken for Len Fairclough only to learn, after she married him and he’d died in a car accident, that he’d been having an affair.

Her next choice was Alan Bradley. The very name sends a shiver down the spine of those who’ve followed the fortunes of Weatherfield’s finest. He was a conman and would-be murderer. He was unfaithful to Rita and remortgaged her house.

Then he tried to suffocate her by holding a pillow over her face. Not quite what she wanted in the way of pillow talk. After the courts let him go, he began stalking Rita… all the way to Blackpool where he was run over by a tram while chasing her.

This mode of public transport was to haunt Rita in later years when a tram fell off the viaduct. “What is it with trams and me?”

she asked after being buried alive in the rubble. Before her world and the tram came tumbling down there was Ted Sullivan, her second husband whose way of celebrating their union was to tell her he had a brain tumour. Alec Gilroy saved her from carbon monoxide poisoning (Deirdre was smoking particularly heavily that day) and proposed.

She said yes – well, she’s a girl who can’t so no – but the wedding never happened.

There was Anthony, who was still married to his wife. Even Kabin co-worker Norris proposed (unlikely, I know, but Rita has that effect on men) but she turned him down.

He was followed by Colin, although their engagement faltered after Rita learnt he had fathered a child by a 15-year-old. Then she tried paying for a man, by waving a cheque and her knickers under the nose of Audrey’s escort chum Lewis.

Then Dennis Tanner turned up. They’d had a thing for each other back in the 1960s when the poor chap on the gallows wasn’t the only thing that was swinging. He was homeless, she was unmarried. It was a match made in soap heaven. But now on her wedding day – during the Queen’s diamond jubilee celebrations – the match is becoming soap hell.

First, she has to deal with snooping Norris and Mary producing a photograph of Dennis with his old flame Norma. More importantly, there’s Rick. Not a toy boy she’s been entertaining on the quiet but the drug dealer with whom Tommy and Tina have become involved.

Tina takes matters, and the bag of drugs, into her own hands and goes to meet Rick.

Slight problem, he’s kidnapped bride Rita who’s all dressed up for a wedding, but finds herself at the docks.

Tina threatens to drop the drugs stash in the river. Rick threatens to drop Rita in the river. Let’s hope there aren’t any tram routes around there.