Joe was a friend of Luke Britton's who used to own a clothing store until it went bankrupt. He and his friend Wes subsequently went into the more dubious business of selling fake designer clothing and one of their lines was the "Mule Face" range of T-shirts.
Not knowing it was a fake, Luke bought one for £25, reduced from the retail price of £83. Luke's friends Tyrone Dobbs, Kirk Sutherland, Jason Grimshaw, Gary Windass and Chesney Brown all put in orders, paid in advance, for similar shirts through Luke, once they had seen that his had attracted the admiration of Talisa Grady. It was Steph Britton who saw through the shoddy workmanship of Luke's t-shirt and pronounced it a fake. Joe refused to refund the monies paid and Luke and the others decided to enact their revenge by going to his lock-up and helping themselves to some of the stock.
Luke, Tyrone, Chesney and Kirk went in Jason's van once the whereabouts of the lock-up had been ascertained through a ruse carried out by Chesney, posing as the purchaser of one hundred of the T-shirts. Once there, they broke the chain lock with a bolt cutter from Jason's van and were happily collecting the stock when Joe and Wes came back. The lads scarpered but Chesney was left behind and spotted by the two men. He managed to evade capture and made his long way home on foot.
In the meantime, back at 9 Coronation Street, the other lads stressed over their missing chum and questioned how violent Joe and Wes could get with him. They were surprised when the two slightly comical men in question arrived on their doorstep with their purchased t-shirts and listened sympathetically to their tale of woe over the break-in at the lock-up, Wes blaming it on "recidivists" (a word his probation officer had taught him). All seemed fine until Joe and Wes came to leave upon when they saw Chesney walking towards the house and realised the connection between him and Luke. They instantly started to repossess Tyrone's widescreen television as compensation and were only stopped by the timely arrival back in Weatherfield of Fiz Stape who had been looking after her mother Cilla Battersby-Brown for several months in Wolverhampton. She made sure that suitable compensation was paid over for the broken lock and sent the two lads on the way under threat of calling the police.