Soap finale set to surprise viewers

Coronation Street fans are in for a festive feast of sex and crime for Christmas Day.

A health scare, a police chase and even a threatening stand-off will all ensure Weatherfield gets anything but a silent night on December 25.

TV bosses have lined up a frantic finale for the year's end in Weatherfield.

It all begins to go wrong when the police raid the Duckworth's home as they sit down to Christmas dinner.

They do not find fugitive Terry, who is hiding in the shed, but when Jack takes him a bundle of cash with his turkey, he collapses.

It forces Terry to choose between saving himself and getting his father to hospital.

For once, tear-away Terry decides to do the right thing and help his father, hot-wiring a car to race Jack to hospital.

But it turns out that Jack, rather than being on the brink of death, was suffering no more than indigestion.

Back in Weatherfield, lovesick Les Battersby grabs wife Janice and holds her captive, begging her not to leave him for his former best friend, Dennis Stringer.

Even Deirdre Rashid seems to have overdone the Christmas spirit when, supplied with a few over-generous glasses of brandy, she ends up in bed with heartbroken Dev Alahan, following a break-up with his fiancée, Geena Gregory.

On St Stephen's day Weatherfield gets its very own nativity scene when Emma Watts unexpectedly goes into labour.

Unable to raise the doctor, Emma is left with only busybody Norris Cole to help her deliver the baby.