Lowri Turner: 'Kat Slater's gone nuclear' - WalesOnline

SO, what do you do with your wedding flowers when you've dumped the groom at the altar?

EastEnders actress Jessie Wallace has had them delivered to her house so she can "watch them die". Blimey, it'll be a horse's head in the non-marital bed next.

Jessie called off the wedding at the weekend because of allegations Vince Morse had sent a dodgy snap of her to his ex.

Now he says he wants the chance to pop round to "explain himself". Hmm, the smart money says steer well clear, Vince, or it won't be just a bunch of delphiniums that is permanently wilted.

Jessie is also demanding the delivery of £20k of wedding booze – but he says he paid for it so he should have it. When you've humiliated the bride, the least you can do is buy her a few drinks, Vince.

When the wine does arrive, Jessie's formerly betrothed, now just loathed, definitely better give her a wide berth.

If she gets her girlfriends round someone needs to surround her house with yellow hazard tape. It'll be bottles of champers and I Will Survive at top volume; total Girl Power carnage.

A bloke only walks into that if he's a strippergram and even then he keeps his wits about him.

Now, of course, Jessie could have decided to sit down for a calm heart-to-heart with Vince to examine the flaws in their relationship that might have caused her once silver-haired charmer to look elsewhere. Instead, Kat Slater's gone nuclear and, oh, how the nation's womenfolk love her for it. All hail, Walford's very own Boudica.

We love Jessie Wallace because she is our very own Jennifer Aniston, albeit a bit rougher round the edges.

She is the girl next door who seems permanently unlucky in love. We love her even more because when the going gets tough she comes out fighting.

Her current mega-flounce is wish-fulfilment for every other girl who's ever had a weevil of a boyfriend who has behaved appallingly and then tried to slime his way back in again. And, yes, there are many chaps who are not weevils, not to mention quite a few females who are.

There are also complex reasons why relationships fail. Being a step-parent to a six-year-old (Jessie's daughter Tallulah), not to mention the partner of a TV star can't be easy.

But, if this were on Jeremy Kyle – and, let's face it, it is only one step away – the audience would say: "Stuff that, make him suffer!"

The problem with stories like this is they bring out the very worst in the female character. They reduce the complicated matter of how to sustain a decent relationship into a two-dimensional yin and yang of her good, him bad. We all gather round our cauldrons and start stirring.

In private, this is what Jessie's girlfriends will be doing.

"We never liked him," they will hiss. In public, it's pure Punch and Judy, only with her holding the stick and him cowering with his sausage(s).

Actually, what it reminds me of is that Ikea TV ad on at the moment where the couple throw cushions at each other. Except that ad is deeply unrealistic. For a female audience, the ones who actually select the bed linen rather than push the trolley along the arrows on the floor, it makes no sense for them both to be chucking stuff.

Since when was getting your pillowcases dusty foreplay? Whenever I watch it, I think: "Watch the lamp! You don't want broken glass on the floor when you're walking around barefoot."

What would be far more believable would be if she was in a right old temper and it was his stuff she was throwing out the window. I'd buy that duvet cover.

While Jessie Wallace holds on to the flowers and the wine, can we expect to see bin bags of Vince's clothes arrive on the doorstep shortly? Probably.

Personally, I favour cancelling the Sky Sports subscription as revenge, although that only works if he's in the house with the telly. (As I said this kind of story brings out the worst in us.)

For British soap audiences, of course, the real frustration is: Was this the wrong man all along? We all know that Jessie should be with TV husband Shane Ritchie, even if his copy book is somewhat blotted. No other bloke is good enough for our Jessie, hence our annoyance when a second-rate chap does the dirty on her.

So we expect, and she delivers, that she exact extravagant and public revenge. She is not venting her own fury, but ours. Well, she is an actress so she knows how to follow the script, plus she's been a star long enough to know how to play the tabloid game.

Wallace is not just a wronged woman, as the queen of our most popular soap she is also the conduit for many millions of feminine hopes and dreams. If she can't find a decent man, then there is absolutely no hope for anyone else. The way she reacts to being duffed up, romantically speaking, is the way we would all like to.

Most of all, Wallace is a woman of her time, as shown by a new piece of research out this week. For years, equality bodies have bemoaned the pay gap between men and women, but now research from the Chartered Management Institute has discovered that a woman manager in her 20s, working full time, earns 2.1% more than her male counterpart.

The reason? Young women are now regarded by employers as more ambitious and efficient. Efficient is a traditional feminine work skill. A great typist in the 1960s might have been regarded as efficient. But ambitious? That suggests a certain kick-ass attitude, exactly the sort of attitude that doesn't put up with cheating husbands-to-be.

Hence the script that Wallace is following. It's the same Girl Power one that Cheryl Cole followed when she dumped Ashley after it was finally, comprehensively proved he couldn't keep his footie shorts on. Coleen McLoughlin, along with the other WAGs, didn't get with the programme, taking a more Tammy Wynette view and as a result appeared as old-fashioned as a teasmaid.

Except, it's not as simple as that, is it? While on the surface much has changed for women – Wallace was the higher earner in that relationship, a rare occurrence a couple of decades ago, but more and more common today – one thing hasn't, the desire for children. This fatally alters the decisions we make about our lives and relationships.

The flip-side of the research that showed young women were trouncing their male colleagues pay-wise also demonstrated that when these same young women want to have children, the pay gap opens up again.

Whether through discrimination, choice or the practical difficulties of combining work and family, there is still a massive £10k pay difference between senior male and female executive salaries.

The truth it, it's easy to act the conquering heroine when you're unfettered by domestic responsibilities, but much more tricky when you have or want to have children.

The great unsayable in the whole Jessie Wallace wedding saga is that a) she is a single parent, which makes dating difficult and b) at 39 if she wants another baby, this may be her last chance.

This is not to say any bloke is better than none, or that Vince Morse deserves to be taken back. But, if after the first flash of anger, Jessie does decide to give him another go, no-one should begrudge her that. She won't be betraying the sisterhood if she wobbles. She is simply being pragmatic.

As a girlfriend of mine who threw out her pillock of a husband and has now taken him back says: "I'd just be swapping him for another idiot five years down the line."

Wise words, even if not quite so entertaining as watching her cut the crotch out of his trousers.