Rocky Cotton (Brian Conley) has run out of time to pay back vicious loan shark Nish Panesar (Navin Chowdhry) in EastEnders, and has resorted to extremes to try and earn some cash.
Rocky foolishly took out a loan with Nish after ex-wife Jo Cotton (Vicki Michelle) demanded £50,000 to keep quiet about his bigamy.
With Kathy Beale (Gillian Taylforth) having emptied her life savings and taken out loans to pay Jo off, Rocky was determined to help her pay everything back, though in doing so has made things much worse.
Kathy is totally unaware of Rocky’s current predicament, and Rocky is determined to keep it that way.
With Nish having discovered Rocky’s gambling addiction, he has given him a deadline to make his first loan repayment, or risk Kathy finding out everything.
This week viewers saw Rocky confide in best friend Harvey Monroe (Ross Boatman) about a plan he had come up with to set fire to the café as part of an insurance scam.
Harvey rightfully told him what a stupid idea it was, but Rocky seemed to have made up his mind.
Thankfully, in the most recent episode of the BBC soap, Rocky seemed to take a U-turn, after Kathy expressed her fears about their current situation.
Having received a third electric shock from the faulty sockets in the café, Kathy had no choice but to close, something she lamented that she should have done earlier.
She confided in Rocky that she felt extremely guilty for putting people’s lives at risk, though Rocky assured her that no harm had been done.
When Harvey later popped in, Rocky revealed that he felt his luck had changed, and he wasn’t going to go through with his frankly quite stupid plan after all.
However, plan B wasn’t much better, as it saw him make his way over to the bookies, where he persuaded manager Olga to let him place a bet.
One bet turned into another and another, until a flurry of wins saw Rocky pocket enough cash to make his first payment to Nish. Thrilled, he got on the phone immediately and asked the loan shark to meet.
However, things took a turn when he bumped into Patrick Trueman (Rudolph Walker), who revealed that he had an epic tip to share.
Though Patrick’s tips are usually bang on the money, this one didn’t come to fruition, leaving Rocky £500 out of pocket and with no means of paying off Nish.
Thankfully, Harvey was set to come to the rescue, having been accepted for a pay day loan, which he offered to use to help Rocky pay off Nish.
However, it wasn’t long before Harvey learnt about Rocky’s little trip to the bookies, and took his offer off the table, starting a huge row with his desperate friend.
Despondent Rocky headed off to meet Nish, who wasn’t impressed when he learnt that Rocky couldn’t pay up.
Rocky was eager to point out that it clearly wasn’t the money that Nish was bothered about, he just enjoyed having power over people, though Nish insisted that he wanted his cash.
With nowhere left to turn, and Nish now demanding two instalments plus 30% interest by next week, Rocky headed to the café, where he began to fiddle with the fuse box.
As he picked up a burnt out plug, it became clear exactly what he was going to do: Go through with his plan to set the café on fire.
Will his plan work, or is disaster just around the corner?
