The job interview 2

The things I know about soap opera are the things that everyone knows. I know that they were first broadcast on radio in the USA in the 1930s. Short, lurid dramas sponsored by washing powder manufacturers hence the name. The original British version is still going. The Archers - an everyday storyof country folk - began life as part of a government initiative in the 1940s to educate farmers about methods of increasing yields. It quickly out-grew its brief and now contains the same kind of stories as all the others - though the best episodes still contain much to warm the heart of the ministry of agriculture. There's still much discussion of organic leeks, the soil association and breeding of rare pigs...

By the 1950s soap opera had made it across to TV in the states, where they tended to focus on the fabulous skullduggery of the privileged classes. The first British versions were far more dour and came from the whole Kitchen-sink, play for today thing. Far more Saturday night, sunday morning than The Great Gatsby.

Coronation Street which began in 1963, was a place where the tensions of the 1960s could be played out in living rooms across the land. Ken Barlow was the grammar school boy who came back from University to his Northern terrace wanting something better and brighter than his parents generation who, having come through two brutal world wars were just happy to have a house, a bit of a garden, pub at the end of the road and dreamt of maybe one day having an indoor toilet and central heating.

What else did I know?

That Crossroads (every day story life in a West Midlands motel) was crap, though the woolly cap wearing simpleton Bennie captured the imagination of the nation, and that the sister of the cult (and dead) singer-songwriter Nick Drake was one of the leads.

An aside: In the Falklands War the locals were called 'Bennies' by the liberating forces. Understandably the good people of Port Stanley were a tad upset and complained to the military authorities. A few days after the order forbidding soldiers to use this pejorative term, a captain was puzzled to hear a private referring to Port Stanley residents as 'stills' asking why he was informed that it was'because they're still Bennies, Sir!'

What else? Channel Four had launched a gritty Liverpool based soap Brookside as one of it's flagship programmes on it's launch in 1982, and that the BBC had, a year or so later, finally launched it's own soap set in London. Eastenders aimed to out-grit them all announcing it's presence with a storyline based around the sudden death of a baby.

The soaps had comedy too, but twenty-five years after their launch British soaps were still largely working class stories concerned with imaginative, intelligent ordinary people trying to make their way without quite enough money or quite enough options. American soaps on the other hand were still largely upper class stories of people with too much money and too many options trying to discover what really counted in a world of greed and betrayal.

And then the Australians changed everything. Neighbours and Home and Away were sunnier in every way than the British versions. Happier people in a happier climate. Younger people too. These twin soaps were full of pinafore dresses and pig-tails. And Kylie Minogue and Jason Donovan. The blast of sun, surf, sea and germ-free sexuality these shows brought to British television led to a change in the home grown soaps. It took a while but essentially it was goodbye Brookie, hello Hollyoaks.

That's about it. That's about all I knew of soaps - like I said - the same stuff everyone knows, and here I was, drunk, being interviewed for a chance to shape the direction of one of the oldest, most established, most respected examples of the genre. Did I want to climb aboard this train? Was there a train? Was I just being delusional? Was it actually just a friendly beer or two after all?