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Apologies, I recall you concurring with my appreciation of Tanya and assumed you watched it at least occasionally.

Oh yes. Well, that was an aberration. Honest.

What the fuck is Hobbes talking about, the deranged buffoon?

He'll be willingly watching Liverpool v Chelsea on his telly-welly tonight. There's more entertainment in the opening sequence of Correh than there is in two legs of that 'programme that turns your tv in to the shit-pump blah blah blah'.

(Seriously, there is. That bit where they CGId a tram going along the end of the street, brilliant)

No one would watch Liverpool vs Chelsea willingly, you spindly northern oaf. It's a matter of duty.

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I hate this cultural snobbery ...

Oh for fuck's sake.

Word.

I hate this accusation of cultural snobbery when you call a turd a turd.

Oh, fuck off. I hate umbrage being taken when you call a cultural snob a cultural snob.

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The thing about the prime time terrestrial soaps is that although they have pretentions to be serious drama (and are marketed as such),

Erm, did I mention that "Neighbours" was my soap of choice? Not prime time, I will admit

The thing is, hobbes, you weren't calling a"a turd a turd" you were being a condescending twat about other people's watching habits.

Anyway, even if you were calling "a turd a turd"...No? Really? You don't say. You know, we are all intelligent people, we know that a lot of it is crap.

As I say, in some ways, it is a form of meditation, a time when we can switch, rest the mind and drift off somewhere else for a bit. A bit of light relief.

It is the equivalent of reading Heat at the supermarket queue, watching an England freindly or talking about confectionary on the internet. There is no real value to it as such, it is "just" entertainment.

You will notice that a lot of people have talked about soaps not being as good after they have gone to three episodes a week. Part of this is that the writing is stretched but, I think, that part of it is that it is more time than they need on meditative escapist TV.

I stopped watching Eastenders and Brookside after they went to 5 days a week as I had too much of a life to spend on them.

Having said this about mindless entertainment, there is a lot about soaps that is culturally important.

In a world that is increasingly fragmented and losing its social hubs (the pub, the water cooler, the church, the post office, the school gates etc) soaps provide people with a virtual community in a lot of places. Instead of gossiping about Mabel down the road, they are gossiping about Roy and Beckah or whoever.

Now it is sad that we are losing the real social hubs and replacing them with imaginary ones but that is the way the world is going

In other words, they are discussing issues to do with inter-personal relationships, which let's face it is what most soaps are about unless they are jumping the shark and having a plane crash or a lesbian kiss.

This is another point about soaps is that they provide useful springboards for discussion of important matters in an everyday manner for a lot of people.

People learnt a lot more about AIDS for instance through Mark Fowler than they did from any ham-fisted government programme.

I have an eight year old son on a household where we listen to Radio 4 a lot and he sees a lot of news but Hollyoaks (which I don't even like) has provided a catalyst for us to talk about homosexuality in great deal while Neighbours has meant that we have talked about adoption.

I am pretty sure that soaps have provided the same catalysts over the years between myself and other adults. Certainly, around the time we were trying for a child, I remember a lot of storylines that were relevant to us.

It is not just the smaller personal issues that soaps bring to a wider audience (almost exclusively in some cases) but they can also show the bigger issues through the prism of the everyday e.g. Mark Fowler's AIDS and many other similar issues.

When done well, in a lot of ways, they are exacly like Dickens' newspaper serialisations in the they are bringing the bigger issues into the everyday.

Before you scoff about the Dickens' comparison, don't forget that Jimmy McGovern and Ken Loach, very much the Dickens of our day, started as soap writers as have many others. Equally a great many of our best actors have appeared in soaps at some point...and Kylie and Holly Vallance.

At the end of the day, the cultural importance of soaps can still be ignored as the importance of them as "meaningless TV" as meditation is still relevant within a wide spectrum of entertainment.

There is a great tradition on OTF, which I have rightfully fallen foul of in the past, of people being called for wading into a thread and holding forth about something they know nothing about.

You, The Liquidator and, to an extent, Nil have come on here and stunk out the thread with absolutely no basis and no real argument to back it up.

Indeed, I believe it is called "doing a hobbes" and with good reason

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The thing is, hobbes, you weren't calling a"a turd a turd" you were being a condescending twat about other people's watching habits.

Was I bollocks. this is a debating board. If you want back-patting and felatory agreement, fuck off to the "I Love Soaps" forum.
And you want condesending? How about calling someone a cultural snob simply because they disagree with you over something shit. If we'd been arguing about Fellini and I disagreed with you, you wouldn't make the same accusation would you? Cultural snobbery is when you don't like something becuase it's low brow. Not because you think it's patently shit. And accusing people of such is disingenuous, sneaky and twattish.

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soaps provide people with a virtual community in a lot of places. Instead of gossiping about Mabel down the road, they are gossiping about Roy and Beckah or whoever.

That's as may be, but it doesn't make it any less crap. People talk about Big Brother all the time. I'd rather gouge my eyes out. Not becuase it's low brow, but because it's stomach churningly awful.

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Now it is sad that we are losing the real social hubs and replacing them with imaginary ones but that is the way the world is going

Great, society's breaking down. It's a good thing we've got the Mitchell brothers to show us the way.

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I am pretty sure that soaps have provided the same catalysts over the years between myself and other adults.

This could be said of hundreds of things.

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When done well, in a lot of ways, they are exacly like Dickens' newspaper serialisations in the they are bringing the bigger issues into the everyday.

Exactly like that, yes.

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Before you scoff about the Dickens' comparison

too late

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don't forget that Jimmy McGovern and Ken Loach, very much the Dickens of our day, started as soap writers as have many others. Equally a great many of our best actors have appeared in soaps at some point...and Kylie and Holly Vallance.

Of course they have. Just like TV presenters often start as runners or journos start working on the local free-ads. It's a way to get your face known in the business. It's a gateway onto other things. The people you mentioned all went on to bigger and (crucially) better things.

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At the end of the day, the cultural importance of soaps can still be ignored as the importance of them as "meaningless TV" as meditation is still relevant within a wide spectrum of entertainment

You can talk up the cultural significance of pretty much anything that exists as a medium. maybe some people meditate or switch off or whatever, watching the testcard. Or a blank screen. Or static. Or here's an idea, something not involving the telly at all.

At the end of the day, I don't completely disagree with some of what you've said. But in a spectacular example of wrong end of stick grabbing, your arguments aren't against what I said. I didn't say that soaps fulfill no role. I didn't say they have no cultural impact. I didn't even say that people who watch them are idiots as you seem to want to make out I do, to give yourself some moral highground that doesn't really exist.
I said they are shit. Which they are. Patently.

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Indeed, I believe it is called "doing a hobbes" and with good reason

And a cheap shot to end on. Well done. Anything else or would you rather just get to back to whining over us horrible cultural snobs?

Your whole argument revolves around this

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And you want condesending? How about calling someone a cultural snob simply because they disagree with you over something shit.

Aiden came on here enthusing about Coronation Street and Liq,Nil and especially you came on and attacked them from a position of seeming ignorance.

Certainly you wouldn't write some of the their remerks if you has actaully watched a fair amount of soaps. You weren't saying Coronation Street was shit or soaps nowadays were shit, you making a blanket remark that all soaps are shit

If Aiden enthusing about, say, the Wolves-Cardiff game last night, the lastest Duffy single or the Chicken Dhansak and you had come on saying "Football/Pop Music/Indian Food is a shit pump" then he would be attackingrich and varied topic with a blanket comment arrived at through ignorance and would be attacked for it and even you eould expect to be.

Equally, It is similar to people ponificating about how "Elvis was good until he went to Vegas and then he was shit and fat"

It is criticising something just because it is popular and populist and that, to me, is cultural snobbery.

There are a lot of shit parts of soap but that doesn't mean that you can call all soaps shit in the same way as a 0-0 draw at Mansfield doesn't make all football crap, a dodgy Checken Tikka doesn't make all Indian food crap and "Elvis In Concert" doesn't make the whole of Elvis' Vegas career crap.

You haven't come up with any argument why soaps are shit and you haven't evne come up with anything sensible as to what I have said as to the cultural importance about soaps (although as I said it is not the main thrust of my argument. Like good pop music, sometimes its unimportance is it importance)

Your whole argument appears to be "soaps are shit" because you say so.

If you think it wrong to call you a cultural snob then don't make statements that have cultural snobbery written all over them.

Equally, if you don't want "doing a hobbes" to become common parlance, stop making arguments which have at their basis as "I am right because I think so even though Ia m totally ignorant of the subject"

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Of course they have. Just like TV presenters often start as runners or journos start working on the local free-ads. It's a way to get your face known in the business. It's a gateway onto other things. The people you mentioned all went on to bigger and (crucially) better things.

Absolutely wrong. McGovern has returned to soaps with "The Street" in order to do almost the ultimate soap. Crucially, he was addressing very similar issues as he was, to great effect and with good actors in "Brookside" when he was there

For fuck's sake, give this up man, you have absolutely no idea what you are talking about

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Oliver Twist (1837-39), Nicholas Nickleby (1838-39), The Old Curiosity Shop and, finally, Barnaby Rudge: A Tale of the Riots of 'Eighty as part of the Master Humphrey's Clock

Also, if you meant Dickens went onto better things, Olver Twist, Nicholas Nickleby and The Pickwick Papers were all serialisations before they were books.

See, what you've not done, in all your enthusiastic advocacy of the soaps, BotD, is offer the slightest scintilla of an argument for why the people who disagree with you about this can only be doing so for reasons of snobbery. Not a hint of a sniff of an iota.

Bored Of The Dance wrote:

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a 0-0 draw at Mansfield

That's all we're asking for on Saturday...