Here’s a picture of a man with a lot on his mind. Eddie is a cabbie. You met him last year. He’s a regular sort of bloke, a bit hen-pecked, nice family, struggles to pay the bills sometimes. Even if you didn’t meet him last year, you should recognise him. He’s a lot like you, and every other bloke you know. He might be broke but he’s surrounded by riches and he doesn’t know it. Sometimes he hankers after what might have been. And then one day, what might have been turns up and offers itself on a plate and Eddie finds himself slipping deeper and deeper into what ifs and maybes while all the time, just out of sight and certainly out of mind, Eddie’s real world is undergoing a crisis of its own.

In the second part of Jimmy McGovern’s sublime drama of everyday people and how their lives can unravel like an old jumper if you pick at a single thread, Eddie’s day begins as usual with a roadside fare…

The fare turns out to be Bob Hewitt, an old schoolfriend of Eddie’s who married Eddie’s childhood sweetheart Pat Tinsey. Bob’s destination is The Melville – the pub that he and Pat run and in which they’re holding a charity fund raiser that night for a local child with leukaemia. Bob invites Eddie, who is very keen to meet up again with Pat.

The Melville is quite close to me. A typical old Manchester boozer having large rooms lined with railway-station-waiting-room benches, I guess it’s ideal for filming but the camera’s eye made it look a lot more appealing than it is in real life. Also, it’s a favourite haunt of Man U fans, and since Eddie sports a Man City badge in his cab I think he should have been slightly more apprehensive about setting foot in there.

But I digress. Eddie’s wife Margie (Ger Ryan) isn’t too keen to let Eddie go alone knowing Pat will be there, but while she’s showering prior to going out she discovers a lump in her breast. This gives her a real scare and she changes her mind about going out, much to Eddie’s disgust. He’s determined not to let Margie spoil his night out though, and off he goes, totally oblivious to her burgeoning panic.

Pat is one of those amazing women who looks every bit as good at 45 as she did at 17. Flame haired, slim and very attentive, Eddie is keen to impress her. He’s already lied to Bob about owning four cabs, and he perpetuates this deception with Pat, even though she claims he was always a bad liar. Catching him ogling her low-cut evening dress, Pat smiles. “Still a tits man,” she observes drily, but without a hint of embarrassment. When the compere auctions off a set of signed snooker balls, Eddie shows off by bidding £1400 against two other bidders who Pat and Bob assure him have more money than sense.

Unfortunately for Eddie, the other two find £1400 too rich for their tastes and Eddie is left offering up his plastic to cover his bid. Staggering home with his balls in one hand and a bottle of brandy in the other, Eddie stumbles up the kerb and the balls take off down the hill. He retrieves all of them bar one. A neighbour happens by. “Looking for Steve Davis,” explains Eddie.

It’s these wonderful little gems that lift McGovern’s writing out of the ordinary. Quite apart from his sharp observation of human foibles and failings, he gets inside the skin of his characters. When you’re drunk, “looking for Steve Davis” would be a perfectly reasonable explanation to anyone giving you a funny look as you crawled about the road with a box of snooker balls in your hand. To us, looking in from the outside, it’s at once poignant, funny and instantly recognisable. McGovern writes about everyman for everyman, and he nails it every time.

The next morning he leaves quickly to avoid any protracted explanations to Marge about balls, lateness or money (consequently also avoiding any possible engagement on the subject of lumps). Unfortunately, while taking his regular morning fare – a wheelchair bound girl – to school, he’s hit from behind at a traffic light by a guy in a rented van. The police are on the scene obscenely quickly, which was the most unbelievable part of the whole hour, but the jaundiced old traffic cop’s suspicions are aroused by Eddie’s minty breath. Sure enough he’s still over the limit from the night before and fails a breathalyser test. Meanwhile Margie has crept off to the breast clinic for a biopsy, but the results are unclear and she’s told she’ll have to return in a couple of weeks.

Here comes another McGovern gem. That night, Eddie and Marge are side-by-side in bed on their backs, both literally and figuratively after the awful day they’ve (independently) had. “Good day?” asks Eddie. “Yeah, you?” Margie asks. “Yeah,” he replies, and they turn over in opposite directions. Brilliant. Five words to sum up the gulf between them, even when laying inches apart.

With a little dramatic licence, Eddie’s court case comes up almost immediately and he’s fined £500 and banned for a year. On top of that, the irate father of the girl in the wheelchair has taken umbrage at Eddie “putting her at risk” by driving while inebriated, and takes out his anger on Eddie’s cab with a baseball bat, smashing all his lights and knocking off a mirror. “I’ll be round with the bill,” says Eddie. “Is that the bill from the garage or the dentist?” asks the thug, biffing Eddie in the mouth and knocking him to the ground.

Desperate to find some money from somewhere, Eddie returns to the Melville with his balls. Pat is there alone. Eddie wonders if the other bidder might be interested in buying them at his last bid. At least that way he’ll only be down £100. Pat explains that the guy was a regular and had admitted he was glad there was someone at the fundraiser more pissed than him. He didn’t really want the balls. Eddie admits he’s broke and doesn’t know what to do, at which point Pat takes pity on him. She’d already warned him what would happen if he came back when Bob was away. She leads Eddie upstairs, straddles him, and starts to kiss him, flattering him with tales of what she and the other girls used to say back in school.

“Bob’s impotent,” she breathes finally, trying to undress him. But Eddie’s conscience gets the better of his lifelong regret at losing Pat, and he runs out into the street. Pat follows. “He knows I’ll stray,” she tells Eddie, “but not with anyone special – hence you.”

Thus proving the age-old tenet that beauty is only skin deep.

Back home, Eddie’s secret is out. His generosity with the snooker balls is front page news in the local free rag. He and Margie agree to share their secrets and she goes first, telling him about her lump and the biopsies. Her courage and fortitude hit Eddie like a mallet. He clams up about his own troubles and agrees to accompany Margie to the clinic to get the results. She’s in the clear. The lump is a cyst. To celebrate they go out for a meal where Eddie unloads the full horror of the events that have unwound over the past few days. Including the £50 bet he placed in an effort to win back some of the lost money.

“There is something in my favour,” he finishes lamely.
“What’s that?” asks Margie.
“I’d have got out of all this if I’d had sex with Pat Tinsey. But I couldn’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because I love you.”

And if there was a dry eye in your house at this point then I pity you. Absolutely heart-gripping writing, delivered with passion and honesty by the wonderful Tim Spall and Ger Ryan. And when Eddie tripped over something on the way home you knew, you just knew, it would be Steve Davis. And it was.

Next week: Demolition man Charlie (Vincent Regan) struggles to understand his feelings when a gay colleague makes a pass at him.