Home and Away has aired the final episode for Irene Roberts until early next year, as the character heads to rehab, where she’s expected to remain for a number of months.
Lynne McGranger, who has played Irene since 1993, has spent the past few months performing as Liz in new comedy musical ‘The Grandparents Club’, which opened in late May and toured theatres in NSW, ACT and Victoria until earlier this week.
“(I’ll be going for) just a little while, not leaving anything permanently,” Lynne revealed on Seven’s The Morning Show earlier this year.
To facilitate Lynne’s break from the show, producers developed a storyline arc which saw recovering alcoholic Irene fall off the wagon for the first time in 9 years.
Irene’s troubles began when Bronte Langford (Stefanie Caccamo) was uncovered as a con artist, who had already successfully scammed the residents of two other towns out of thousands of dollars before turning her attention to Summer Bay.
Bronte arrived in the bay after meeting Irene at a hospital in the city, where Irene was undergoing a routine health check. Bronte befriended Irene before explaining that she was dying of an autoimmune disease, and had exhausted all treatment options.
While Bronte kept the details light, Irene fell for her story and invited her back to Summer Bay to stay with her, Dana (Ally Harris) and Harper (Jessica Redmayne) at the beach house.
Before long, Irene had introduced Bronte to her closest friends, all of whom fell for her story too. Bronte soon revealed that there was only one potential option to cure her – an experimental and very expensive treatment in Canada.
Bronte insisted that there was no way she could afford it, and Irene decided to make it her mission to raise the funds.
When Xander (Luke Van Os) suggested they set up an online crowdfunding campaign, Bronte’s plan was beginning to fall into place. Sure enough, within days the money began rolling in.
Then, when the diner was revealed as the source of a number of residents falling sick, Bronte’s luck really came in. A customer began taking legal action against the diner, suing them for $50,000.
Her eyes lighting up, Bronte then told Irene that she too had been poisoned by the diner’s contaminated water supply, prompting Irene to suggest that Bronte herself should sue the diner for the hefty sum, safe in the knowledge that the business’s insurance would cover it.
Unfortunately for Irene, the insurance company refused to cover the claim as the business had previously been advised to inspect their plumbing, but had failed to do so. Suddenly, Irene faced the prospect of stumping up the cash herself, and set about remortgaging her house.
Throughout the ordeal, the only person who didn’t believe Bronte’s story was Dana. The experienced nurse noticed how vague Bronte was about her autoimmune disease, and how she always made an excuse to leave whenever anyone asked any questions.
Dana managed to persuade Bree (Juliet Godwin) to risk her career by looking up Bronte’s medical record on the computer system at Northern Districts, and Bree soon confirmed that there was nobody with Bronte’s name registered as a patient at any hospital in the state.
Knowing that Dana was onto her, Bronte enlisted the help of her accomplice Chase (Joshua Mehmet) and the pair kidnapped Dana, locking her in a shipping container in a remote area.
It was John (Shane Withington) and Xander to the rescue as they spotted Bronte driving Irene’s car out of the bay, which piqued their curiosity.
They followed her to the remote location, where they stumbled across Dana, who had managed to escape the container and was on the run from Bronte and Chase. John called the police, and it wasn’t long until Bronte and her accomplice were behind bars.
While everything quickly resolved itself, with everyone being returned the money they’d donated to Bronte’s ‘treatment,’ Irene couldn’t get over the fact that her naivety led to her friends nearly being scammed out of thousands of dollars.
Bronte dug the knife in further by calling Irene a stupid old woman during their final encounter at the police station.
Struggling to cope with her grief and embarrassment, it wasn’t long until Irene considered turning back to alcohol to help numb the pain.
The first time that she considered it, she made an urgent call to a helpline and took a long walk along the beach. She was talked back from the brink and threw away the bottle of whiskey she’d bought, remorseful for even considering it.
However, when a well-meaning John (Shane Withington) called around the following morning, putting his foot in it by telling that Xander was the one suffering at the moment, she asked him to leave and she finally succumbed to the bottle.
Leah (Ada Nicodemou) and Marilyn (Emily Symons) noticed Irene was a bit out of sorts when she eventually showed up for work, making numerous sarcastic comments towards them.
But it was a later outburst at Dana, who she called pathetic for always playing the victim and punishing Xander, that caused real concern.
Irene soon realised her mistake as John went to check on her, and as she promised to apologise to Dana, he reminded her that he was only a phone call away.
In the weeks that followed, Irene see-sawed between throwing away whiskey bottles in brief moments of positivity, before returning to the grog shortly after.
A particularly low point came when she agreed to be interviewed by the Coastal News, with Leah believing it would be a good opportunity to warn others and stop them from falling prey to similar scammers.
Yet Irene’s nerves over the interview saw her turn to the bottle once again.
Reporter Fleur (Nikita Waldron) thought she’d struck gold when Irene turned up drunk and gave a brutally honest overview of events, making clear how her own naivety and stupidity allowed Bronte to take advantage of her.
Irene eventually owned up to her drinking, but insisted that after 9 years of sobriety, she was making a conscious decision to start drinking alcohol again. Pointing out that Leah frequently had a glass of wine to relax after a stressful day of work, Irene questioned why she couldn’t enjoy the same pleasure.
Desperate to prove that she had her drinking under control, she invited Marilyn (Emily Symons) and Leah for an evening drink at the beach house. Leah made an excuse to avoid it, but Maz happily joined her friend, and seemed to believe that Irene wasn’t pushing things too far.
When Irene then hosted a dinner party, joined by John, Maz and Irene, John couldn’t keep his feelings to himself as he refused to drink, before later snooping through Irene’s cupboards in search of her alcohol stash.
A few days later, he saw Irene dumping a bag in a bin not far from the Surf Club. Heading to investigate, he found countless empty bottles of whiskey, confirming once and for all that Irene was being consumed by her alcoholism.
Still pushing away any offers of help, Irene began turning up to her diner shifts visibly drunk. When she was ordered home by Leah, she drowned her sorrows with yet more whiskey.
As she went to climb the stairs to bed, she passed out, tumbling down the stairs and hitting her head.
She did her best to clean herself up and apply a bandage to her head wound, but when Harper eventually returned home and found Irene battered and bruised, she rushed her to hospital. But not before Irene grabbed her handbag, rudely instructing Harper to keep her hands off it.
Irene refused to admit to Bree that she had a problem, but once left alone, she couldn’t resist taking a swig from her hip flask, which was stashed away in her handbag.
She was caught red-handed by Bree, who pointed out that if she couldn’t resist a drink after landing herself in hospital, it’s clear that she has a problem.
Bree’s words were the wake-up call that Irene desperately needed.
When Marilyn turned up at the hospital, her demeanour had completely changed, and she gave a sincere apology for being drunk at work, and for how she’d treated those around her.
Shortly after, Irene had a tearful reunion with John, where she apologised for letting her alcoholism get the better of her.
When John offered to take her home, she explained that she couldn’t go back there as she couldn’t be trusted to get through this alone, before revealing that Bree had found her a rehab clinic.
Making one last trip to the diner to apologise to Leah and Marilyn, Irene explained that she didn’t know how long she would be gone for.
She and John then departed the diner, ready for John to drive her to the clinic.
“You okay?” John asked as the pair walked out.
“I will be,” Irene replied, confidently.
Irene is expected to be off screens for a number of months, until early 2025.
Irene was one of a number of characters teased as potentially dying in upcoming episodes. A TV Week article revealed that either Irene, Cash (Nicholas Cartwright) or Felicity (Jacqui Purvis) would say goodbye, with a Channel 7 promo later adding Eden (Stephanie Panozzo) and Harper (Jessica Redmayne) into the mix.
The promo showed Irene falling down the stairs, implying that her fall could have been fatal. However, with Irene suffering no more than some bumps and bruises, the trip to hospital ended up being her wake-up call.
However, in an interview with Stellar magazine back in May, Lynne hinted that she has been thinking more about a permanent exit from Summer Bay in recent years, after 31 years on the show.
“It’s something I’ve mulled over, and it has been in the back of my mind for the last year or two. Certainly, no date has been set [to leave] but what I love about working on The Grandparents Club and being involved in this wonderful celebration is that it’s taking me back to my roots.”
“Who knows what the future holds,” she added teasingly. “If this is successful, god willing, I might just be hanging up my diner apron.”
