SOAP THERAPY

A few months ago I realized I haven’t watched Soap Operas for ages. Several years ago I wouldn’t have dreamed of missing my favourites, Emmerdale, Coronation Street and Eastenders. Then I decided to plot a graph of my life and corresponding viewing habits relating to said “Soaps”. To my amazement I discovered that the periods of frenetic “Soap” devotion happened to coincide with the most miserable times in my life. I gave up viewing Eastenders several years ago because the storylines were far too depressing and as I am a genuine Cockney, (well I was born in Hackney almost within the sound of Bow Bells), I didn’t feel the episodes genuinely represented a true picture of Cockneyism. That made me wonder, do we watch programmes depicting gritty and sometimes painful reality because the sheer horror of the characters’ day to day existence cheers us up and makes us appreciate the fact that there’s always someone worse off than ourselves? We may be suffering from stress caused by ageing parents or troublesome teenagers or the bank balance may be a lot lower than we would like but we haven’t been diagnosed with an exotic incurable disease and our husband hasn’t run away with the local vet’s lesbian mother! Life appears to be running reasonable smoothly at the moment, though after a lifetime of slipping on bananas when I least expect it I’m not letting myself become too smug. Never mind, I know that if dark clouds appear on the horizon any time soon, I can always rely on the fictitious and truly awful lives of the Platt family, Michelle and Steve or Paddy and Rhona and the entire Dingle dynasty to make me realize it’s much, much better being me.