If real life was like a soap opera...

...I'd have at least three secret siblings, two mothers, a murdering father-in-law and have slept with my girlfriends ex-boyfriends boyfriend. Twice. But it's not. So I haven't.

I haven't watched any soap operas for years. It was Home and Away when I was a young 'un, then Coronation Street and Emmerdale. Latterly just Emmerdale as Corrie slowly turned into a daily run of the dreadful Christmas pantomime version. Then Emmerdale became Dinglevision, as every bastard offspring and inbred arsewipe relative descended onto the Dales to irreparably damage the local tourist industry.

But the main reason I no longer watch them is because I don't have to. Thankfully the front halves of the weekly listings magazines are devoted to spoiling every formulaically scripted event of the coming seven days. Roy's man-wife Hayley has a secret son from before the testicle-chop? Wow, what a surprise that will be! Er no, not really. Not after reading a full page article detailing the exact chain of events that will lead her to discovering this secret and even showing a photo of her lost son to completely ruin any sense of suspense.

To be honest I'm not surprised. The level of sophistication of the plotting of these utterly farcical dramas is set so low for the vacuous people that watch it I'm surprised the production companies don't send round a personal story-shouter to the house of every dim-witted viewer, to sit next to them whilst the episode plays, bellowing the major plot points into their earholes in case they don't understand what's happening on the goggle box wot shows pics and stuff.

Anyway, got to go now. That local TV news helicopter is hovering distractingly low over my house again. Better get next door's wife in with me so that when it inevitably crashes through my roof in a contrived "event" we can be trapped in a small room and spend the next two episodes having a dramatic heart-to-heart in which we find out that we have had long-repressed feelings for each other after all. Then I die from boredom.