“IT IS a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good tool box and good looks must be in want of a wife.”
Jane Austen didn’t come up with exactly those words, but there is little doubt had she been around today she'd be attributing them to Jason Grimshaw.
Jason, as Coronation Street fans will know, leaves the soap after sixteen years and he will leave a nation bereft because this character has been so Austen-like and so pivotal. Jason, it’s plain to see, is a modern day George Knightley, the central figure in Emma, who was the epitome of kindness.
While George took care of vulnerable women like Miss Bates and stepped in to dance with the lowly Harriet Smith having been snubbed by the awful Mr Elton, Jason continually came to the rescue.
No sooner was he in the Street in 2001, than he had thrown a protective arm around the abused Toyah Battersby. Along the way he has championed Gail Platt and the lovely Tina, took it upon himself to defend Becky and more recently Sarah Lou, from her evil drug dealer boyfriend.
What Jason Grimshaw also brought to the Street – and the nation – was the belief it’s all right to be ordinary and decent. This brown-sauce-on-chips sensibility saw him looked after his mam, was as honest as the day was long (never conning customers with cheap materials) and always available to repair the burst pipe under the sink.
The Street represents a heightened reality, just as Austen’s novels do, and in this contrivance Grimshaw was a necessary hero. Not only did he preach a pink tolerance unimaginable in a blue collar world, a devout heterosexual who lived with two gay men and indeed was at one time Mr Gay Weatherfield, he was clearly in touch with his feminine side. As such, he allowed heroines to thrive, such as Stella the bar manager and Carla the knicker factory boss. He understood how women were so often trapped on bottom ladders and he’d immediately offer a hand up. And while fixing their leaky drains he’d offer a shoulder to cry on.
But not only was he not a predator, he was so often a victim. As Austen turned so many of her men into emotional wrecks, so too was the overly sensitive Jason, reduced to tears by clever Austen-like females who took advantage of his restricted intellect and his hunky, gym-toned body. And so we watched as he lost out to Candice and Maria and Becky, and Rosie and Tina and Stella and Eva . . .
But we have been thankful for Jason Grimshaw’s experiences. They have given every less good looking man in the country hope in the realisation if a checked-shirted body-building builder who’s brilliant with a shifting spanner can’t find happiness, then it’s all right for the rest of us to fail.
Yes, he did have his little moments; he jumped out of the church window and left Sarah Lou at the altar. But even Austen’s heros are a little flawed and his subsequent tears created puddles in Weatherfield’s streets.
And while Jason’s departure will leave the soap world at a loss, we can take comfort, to a degree from actor Ryan Thomas calling it a day. The thirty-two year-old is off to try his hand in Hollywood, confirming the notion youth should emerge a universal hopefulness, that doesn’t have to be matched with any real possibility.
Jason was a man of few words. But then so was George Knightley: “I cannot make speeches, Emma. If I loved you less I might be able to talk about it more.” Jason didn’t need to say much. He was Austen. He was real in that sense.
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