I've got to be honest, episodes with heavy drug themes are my least favourite in the Shameless stable. Maybe it's because I don't find drugs as funny as some people do, having seen, to quote Allen Ginsberg, "the best minds of my generation", to paraphrasonically crib-note Howl, "get irreversibly f--ked up on drugs".

If there's one family you wouldn't want to owe money to, it'd be the Maguires. They're not so understanding on the debt front - just ask the ambitious lady cop who has a bit of a gambling problem, or indeed any of Paddy's children.

Maturity: you know you’ve reached it when you start asking your parents why they did things you’ve always, until then, just outright blamed and begrudged them for. Why did my brother get braces but I wasn’t allowed and now have a mouth like a plundered graveyard? Might be one question, er, someone might ask. You come to forgive them things like never buying you a Malvern Star if you finally find out you were poor but they’d always made you feel well-off. That’s a nice thing.

So here I am every week thinking that despite his over-the-top drug and alcohol intake, Frank Gallagher is one of television's most morally sound men… but then this week he goes and has an affair. Deary, deary me. What to make of it?

Let's look at the facts. Frank's a no-hoper. He's on the dole, a drunk, a druggie. He doesn't support his family. His kids have about as much respect for him as he has for himself. He has bugger-all interest in his wife Monica's pregnancy, and possibly no interest in her full stop.

Jeez, if you think you've got problems with your relationship, you should check out this week's episode of Shameless to put things into perspective. The Gallagher kids make real-life relationship dysfunction look almost romantic.

Randy Ian surprises himself by learning how to take a gay relationship slowly, falling head over Nikes for a fit fireman who's come to sort out a "gas leak" caused by Frank leaving on the ignition to the stove after he tried to light a fag off the burner. It's a beautiful, steamy start and the cameras don't turn off when they turn themselves on. But this is love, not sex, so if you're after gratuitous animalistic humpery you're looking in the wrong place.

Everyone's running away from home in this week's episode of Shameless. As usual, the "Chatsworth buccaneers" are succeeding at nowt but failing and some have fallen so far as to take the only option they can think of: up stumps and leg it.

Micky, because he stupidly let someone run off with Paddy's cocaine supply for the week. Instead of waiting for the inevitable knee-capping from his dad, he tries to get it back but his cowardice gets the better of him at every turn… until, well, that'd spoil it.

 There’s an election going on for “young mayor” of Chatsworth Estate, with the teenage winner getting access to a whopping £10,000 kitty to go toward improving the lives of residents. But when politics comes into the mix, corruption – and sordid sexual antics – is sure to follow, as this week’s episode of Shameless proves.

Debbie is leading a campaign to get Pakistani kid Chesney elected as young mayor on a ballot of “free egg and chips for all”. He’s a bit of a dour teen and she has to Photoshop a smile on his face for the promotional T-shirts and flyers, but she reckons he’d have to be better than the other candidates: a skinhead, a teenage mum who trots out the old ‘the children are our future’ line, and Sarah Berry, whose campaign speech consists of exposing her pretty impressive cleavage to the public.

This week's Shameless kicks off with the Chatsworth folks getting in a tizz about an unclaimed lottery prize worth half a million pounds, the ticket to which was sold on their estate.