Hollyoaks III

From November 2012

In the unlikely event of my ever appearing on Desert Island Discs my luxury would be Hollyoaks - all of it. Along with the Tour de France and the Eurovision Song Contest it's the only thing worth owning a TV for.

The brilliance of Hollyoaks is that you can not watch it for a while and usually pick it up with only the minimum of cranial effort. Nothing much really changes: you can all but guarantee that there will be someone on the verge of getting married (often to a totally unsuitable partner, sometimes for the second time), some poor sod hooked up to a breathing machine in hospital, people shouting at each other, an improbable start-up business, kids either giving up or starting smoking weed and always, always, Brendan mumbling incoherent threats to anyone who gets in the way of his Damascene conversion. It's all very reassuring.

Tuning in this evening ("tuning in" - get me) after a break of a few months was just like putting on a favourite pair of slippers although for once it was quite hard to follow what had happened. It appeared that the entire cast had been injured in some horrendous accident with everyone wandering about with gashes to their faces and weeping at the slightest provocation. It also seems that at least one person had died. In the long term (two weeks in Hollyoaks) Rhys is unlikely to be missed but for now his loss is being felt by his wife Jacqui, lover Cindy and mother-to-be of his child Sinead.

The McQueen family has a history of emotional breakdowns and Jacqui didn't disappoint. After having a quick cat fight with Cindy she resorted to the only sensible solution: drinking cheap Vodka straight from the bottle and listening to the Verve's 1997 comeback album Urban Hymns. It was slightly annoying that her long suffering mother Myra switched the music off before it got to The Drugs Don't Work.

Can't wait until Jacqui finds out about Sinead ...