Bob Hope (Tony Audenshaw) was not a happy man at the start of Monday (August 14)’s episode of Emmerdale – and by the end of it he was fighting for his life.
Bob has been struggling ever since he discovered his partner Wendy (Susan Cookson) had been enjoying the pleasures of local GP Liam Cavanagh (Jonny McPherson) for quite some time. Although Wendy has been doing her best to try to convince Bob that it’s him she loves and she regrets the fling with Liam, Bob has not been convinced. It’s become apparent that there were underlying issues in their relationship to begin with.
Previously we’ve seen Bob vowing to take revenge against his love rival Liam, and as this episode began he was simmering with rage. Bernice (Samantha Giles) urged him to calm down. ‘Life’s too short for all this hatred and revenge,’ she advised.
When the phrase ‘life’s too short’ is uttered in a soap it’s often a signal that someone’s life might be about to come to an abrupt end very soon, and that was almost the case here. After winding himself up into a frenzy of annoyance about Archie (Kai Assi) kicking his football towards the B&B, the final straw for Bob was seeing Wendy and Liam come out of Liam’s house together.
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What he didn’t know was that Wendy had just been offering Liam her resignation as she realised that working alongside him would mean she and Bob could never move on.
Bob immediately launched into a tirade at Liam and tried to goad him into a fight. When Liam wouldn’t be goaded, Bob punched him, leaving him with a bleeding nose.
As Jacob (Joe-Warren Plant) tried to hold Bob back, the B&B proprietor was further enraged at the sight of Wendy helping Liam with his nosebleed. Victoria (Isabel Hodgins) tried to urge calm by reminding everyone about the dire consequences Dan (Liam Fox) now faces after punching Lloyd (Matt Sutton).
The fighting between Bob and Liam was done in a comic sort of way but the tone quickly became serious. Bob had been rubbing his chest throughout the scene and the reason for that became clear moments later when he collapsed. Liam realised he was in cardiac arrest and got Jacob to help him with the defibrillator.
In tense scenes Liam and Jacob worked hard to save Bob’s life, and he eventually started breathing again and was rushed to hospital where he faces surgery.
In the aftermath, Victoria let Bob’s ex wife Brenda (Lesley Dunlop) and Bernice know what had happened and they soon rushed to the hospital to join a distraught Wendy. If she’d hoped for some moral support from them she was in for a disappointment. While Bernice tried to keep everyone calm, Brenda had no doubts that it was all Wendy’s fault and insisted on saying so.
‘You ruined that man’s life,’ she told her. ‘You have literally broken that man’s heart.’
As Bob recovers, will he continue to blame Wendy too, or will it prove to be a turning point?
‘At least this big dramatic moment means they’re going to talk about the issues that they had and hopefully that might bring them closer,’ Tony Audenshaw told us. ‘I do hope Bob and Wendy stay together.’
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