Sinister Celia grooms Moira into committing crime in unsettling Emmerdale development

Moira Dingle (Natalie J Robb) had another visit from her new best mate Celia Daniels (Jaye Griffiths) in Monday (September 15)’s Emmerdale. Celia arrived bearing a casserole – and a proposition.

It’s hard to know what to make of Celia, apart from she’s fabulous, of course. That’s a given. With her farming chic wardrobe complete with shepherd’s crook, her air of undeniable confidence and her ruthlessness, she’s already become a fan favourite.

But whose side is she on? Initially she went into partnership with Moira in a deal that was supposed to save Butlers from the depths of financial doom. When that went pear-shaped it was revealed that she was at that point in cahoots with Joe Tate (Ned Porteous) to destroy Moira.

Then, in another twist, Celia pledged her allegiance to Moira, confessing she’d been working with the Tates. She and Moira bonded in the aftermath of that revelation and Celia even opened up about her own personal life – something we didn’t know anything about previously.

In a conversation about Moira’s late daughter Holly, Celia said that she had a grown-up son that she doesn’t see much of, and that her husband had died. Moved by what she heard, Moira reassured Celia that she was now no longer on her own.

With the two women now apparently friends, it seemed a neighbourly gesture for Celia to pop by with a casserole in this episode. She was sympathetic that Moira was working her socks off to keep the farm afloat and wouldn’t have the time or energy for cooking.

The casserole was just the starter, though. The main reason for Celia’s visit was that she had another business proposal for Moira, and left the papers with her.

Moira had a look, and the scheme seemed like a non-starter. It involved keeping chickens on a large scale, and there are apparently a lot of rules around that, and inspections need to be done and licenses need to be issued before someone can go into that line of business. Sometimes Emmerdale can be so educational.

So Moira wasn’t keen on the plan, basically because doing it without the right paperwork would be illegal. Lest we forget, the reason Moira’s finances are in such a mess is because she had to pay a huge fine after slurry from her farm ended up in the lake, courtesy of John Sugden (Oliver Farnworth), but nobody knows that bit. So she knows the trouble she could get into by getting on the wrong side of the rules and regulations.

However, Celia is extremely persuasive. She said the scheme would be ‘small fry’ compared to the kind of things she’d heard the Dingles get up to. It could earn them both a lot of money. And, she reasoned, the paperwork would probably have all come through by the time the enterprise was up and running and nobody would check before then.

‘Is this some kind of stunt?’ Moira wanted to know. Celia pretended to be offended by this and reminded her of how she’d double-crossed Joe Tate on Moira’s behalf.

Reluctantly, Moira signed the contract. ‘It’s not like I have a choice,’ she said, warning Celia to talk to her first before she came up with any other schemes.