Geoff Metcalfe is indisputably the most hated villain in soap land at the moment, and he was back to his vile ways as he returned to Coronation Street from hospital.
Geoff, who was stabbed by his wife Yasmeen after months of bullying and manipulating her, claimed their house back from her granddaughter Alya Nazir who had changed the locks to keep him out.
And after booting Alya out with help from police office Craig Tinker, he made himself busy deleting vital CCTV footage of himself brandishing a knife at Yasmeen on the night she stabbed him with a broken wine bottle in self defence.
For a moment it appeared he might have been finally caught out when his son Tim Metcalfe walked in to catch a glimpse of CCTV footage on his laptop before he slammed it shut.
But Geoff managed to wheedle his way out of the situation by saying he'd installed a camera because he was the one who felt unsafe around Yasmeen.
The liar said he was trying to find evidence from the fateful night he was stabbed, but it had only captured two weeks previously because it was on the blink.
"Having it there felt like a crutch," he wailed.
"I felt safer having it there because Yasmeen was out of control and I was scared."
He pretended to be upset that he hadn't mentioned the camera before to the police and manipulated Tim into agreeing to keep it a secret.
Fans are rooting for Geoff, played by Ian Bartholomew, to be caught out and Yasmeen, played by Shelley King, to be freed after being charged with attempted murder.
Geoff installed cameras last year after a staged break-in as an excuse for him to keep a watch over his wife.
When Yasmeen protested that she didn't want them in the house, he angrily ripped the CCTV down but he secretly left a camera up.
Despite being told to constantly clean the house, she was yet to find the one he left in the living room.
"That’s it. Yasmeen is going to jail," fumed one viewer on Twitter.
"Fuming at this," said another.
"Oh gawd, he’s going to delete all the evidence the evil man," tweeted another.
And another suggested: "If Geoff deletes the video hope they are in the cloud. He needs to be found out and soon."
Geoff could come undone after telling Tim that Yasmeen knew about the camera, which isn't true.
After feeding Tim his sob story, Geoff then sneakily binned the camera with their used fish and chip papers.
Coronation Street has raised awareness of coercive control with this harrowing storyline.
Since 2015 this form of abuse has been classed as a criminal offence and underpins 95 per cent of all abusive relationships.
Producer Iain Macleod said previously about the storyline: “It’s common for people to think abusive behaviour has to be physical - but you can damage someone profoundly without laying a finger on them.
"Many thousands of people feel trapped in relationships with someone who claims to love them but who is actually taking them apart piece by piece, isolating them from friends and family and locking them in an invisible prison of fear and insecurity.
"Often, the abusive behaviours accumulate and intensify over time so that you don’t realise it’s happening - it’s an insidious type of brainwashing."
