Joe Tate (Ned Porteous), a man who thinks he can handle any situation thrown at him, did not know how to deal with being bitten by a young child in tonight’s episode of Emmerdale.

Ever since Dawn Taylor (Olivia Bromley) split up with Billy Fletcher (Jay Kontzle), she has made it clear to Joe that he really doesn’t need to try and connect with children Clemmie and Lucas.

But Joe has fallen in love with Dawn, so he feels the need to at least attempt to spend time with her kids.

In tonight’s episode, Billy was still at Home Farm. He had spent a few nights there after Evan was hospitalised with at temperature. To Dawn, he was simply there to help out but to Billy, he grew hopeful and wondered if it was a sign his ex was missing him.

Unfortunately, that was far from the case.

After Joe attempted to help by giving Clemmie and Lucas a lift to a party, Dawn told him that he doesn’t need to get involved with the ‘domestic stuff’.

Somewhat frustrated he was being kept in a specific box, Joe then admitted Billy being at Home Farm and around Dawn was making him feel claustrophobic.

This small comment was enough for Dawn to tell Billy that he needed to move back out. The character was crushed, but he remained unaware the decision was only being made because of Joe – not the children.

Joe later told Dawn that he might’ve felt a tiny bit jealousy of Billy, and she reassured him by kissing him. Unfortunately, this interaction was spotted by Clemmie, who went into her shell and refused to speak to anyone afterwards.

The youngster was cornered by Joe just before the episode ended.

He actually wanted to get to know Clemmie and Lucas better and offered to take them to the cinema, but switched-on Clemmie wasted no time in revealing that she saw Joe kiss Dawn, and that she doesn’t really like him.

Joe attempted to manipulate Clemmie into keeping quiet but just as she ran off, Joe grabbed her jumper. She reacted by biting his arm, and made it clear his tactics to try and change her opinion of him wouldn’t work.

Later in the week, Home Farm will be the location of Lydia Dingle’s (Karen Blick) birthday party.

While the celebrations get underway, a tense atmosphere is creating due to the place also being filled with people who would like to see the back of Joe.