Soaps Redux

Following our post-Christmas navel gaze on TV soap operas, the thinktank here at Scaryduck Towers has been hard at it thinking up new ways of improving Britain's favourite entertainment medium. Good God, our nation is doomed if it's come to this.

- Cthulhu Street: The Nyarlathotep family move in at the Rover's Return with hilarious results. Can Sir Les Battersby finish his pint while being strangled by tentacles? Is Deirdre Barlow one of the Old Dark Ones? Will Fred Elliot's continued utterances of "Hastur, I said Hastur" bring doom and destruction on the street?

- Pull in the dirty old spunker audience by changing EastEnders to "Soapy Tit Wank". Drive them all away again by revealing that Dot Cotton and Pat Butcher have cornered the world supply of soap.

- Guest appearance of Hayley Cropper's pickled meat and two veg, to be played by TV's Ant and Dec.

- A ban on the dreaded EastEnders "knees up" by smashing their knees with a hammer.

However, that's just tinkering with old formats. What's needed is a whole new show, with new angles and new issues. We are, therefore, proud to present, live and direct from sunny Belfast, "Communion Street".

Picture the scene - the Paisley family - dad a firey protestant preacher with a mysterious past, a son so Orange that he can only be the bastard progeny of David Dickinson and Judith Chalmers (now there's a plot twist), move into a house next door to the staunchly catholic Adams family just off the Falls Road - with hilarious results! Was that really Mr Adams coming out of the Rub-a-Tug shop with Mr McGuinness? And why does his wife never bother getting dressed until after the milkman's been?

The plot possibilities are endless. Will anyone turn up to the Paisley's "Stuff the Pope" barbeque? Will the constabulary find the crate of Libyan AK-47's and fifty pounds of Semtex in the Adams's bathroom? And who built the razor-wire fence up the middle of the public bar in the Cardinal and Firkin? And when Mrs Adams gets put up the duff by young Paisley, that only the start of their Troubles!*

You mark my words - this one's gonna go big. With a big gap in the schedules where Brookside used to be, it's only a matter of time before Channel Four picks it up.

* Poltical Correctness watch: Being half Irish, and having lived in Belfast for a whole eight weeks, I am therefore allowed to make gags like this.

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