I wrote World of Lather for nine years, an exceedingly daft whistlestop tour around the cobbles and pub snugs. These people felt like friends: we knew their quirks, weaknesses and motivations. I adored soap because the viewer was omnipotent, flying around the houses, knowing everyone’s secrets: that Janine had her former stepmother’s name in her phone as Fat Pat Sally Webster’s constant quest for social betterment Peter Barlow’s drinking Heather Trott’s love of George Michael. Coronation Street wrong ‘un Richard Hillman. On Corrie, the love life of Gail Rodwell, AKA Potter, Tilsley, Platt, Hillman and McIntyre, was never short of exhilarating, particularly in 2003 when her then husband, serial killer Richard Hillman, tried to kill her mother Audrey, murdered Maxine Peacock then drove Gail’s family into a canal.īlood on the cobbles. The powerful sexual magnetism of Max Branning and his affair with Stacey Slater, culminating in a Christmas Day post-lunch family fight, was the highlight of 2007. I lived for moments like Janine Butcher pushing Barry to his death off a small hill and Den Watts coming back from the dead. It gave a nation something to gossip about. We adored the constant aggro provided by gobby characters such as Peggy Mitchell and Janice Battersby. Soap, on the other hand, showed us family life, warts and all: the addiction, the infidelity, the scandal. Back then, real British people were actually rather private and would rarely publicise their own family woe, or God forbid, film it, share it or ask for comment. From the 70s to the 00s, I devoted thousands of hours to the goings-on of the Rovers Return and Albert Square. They were cultural behemoths that dominated the TV schedules. Soap operas, meanwhile, felt like a pivotal part of society. The internet was new, mysterious and operated via slow dial-up that you could only use when your mum didn’t need to talk to Aunty Sheila.

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