Dion

No lol Colleen's been a regular since 1999 and before that was a recurring character back in 1988/89 as she was the mother of one of the original characters, Lance who (in a role reversal) now recurs from time to time (and speaking of Lance I believe Marilyn was initially brought on as his girlfriend, but stayed on after he left). It's actually quite weird that they decided to bring on a recurring character from the 80s back to the show as a regular ten years later but at the time H&A was going through a bit of a nostalgia phase that actually lasted for several years (from about 1999 - 2005 you'd often see old characters return for brief stints for events such as Sally's failed 2000 wedding, Summer Bay's 150th anniversary, Sally's surrogacy storyline, Sally's wedding to Flynn, Alf's 60th birthday for the 4000th episode etc). Anyway, a storyline from about two years ago revealed that Alf and Colleen were half-siblings (conveniently ignoring the fact that Alf once dated Colleen's long lost daughter whom she'd given up for adoption, though they never actually had sex or anything and it only lasted for about a week or two).

oh he should be quite good for the show...his run on Shortland Street as producer was one of the best periods in the show's history (particularly 2007 and 2008)...although he does seem to have a bit of an obsession with murder and mayhem! lol

Yes that's a very good point. In fact it took many years for Neighbours to recover from that point in the mid 90s when noone in the cast (except Anne Haddy's Helen) had been on the show longer than three years and while its not likely to get to that point again in the next few years, the departure of long term characters like Steph is always a concern asI don't think there's not that many in the current cast (long time cast members excluded) that will go the distance.

How about never? lol Louise never got done for Ray's death and there is still that question mark over what really happened to Eric Pollard's second wife Elizabeth.

I liked Adi myself, I couldn't wait until he finally snapped and did his father in (which was where they were going before Dilip Tahil's visa problems mucked everything up).

Pauline Quirke should be quite good on Emmerdale. I liked her on Birds of a Feather. Though I would have actually thought she'd be more suited for EastEnders lol...but then again just because she's a Londoner and has mainly worked for the BBC in the past doesn't mean she can't do Emmerdale.

oh wrong tense there, I meant to say begin to use her heavily again not began to use her heavily again. I guess Her summer hiatus would have been around the time that she was supposed to take maternity leave and she may have decided to take it anyway.

I think that Kym Marsh's personal problems last year might have something to do with Michelle being backburned for a while too. She did after all tragically lose her baby shortly after birth last year, suffer from depression, split with her partner (though they are now back together) etc etc so the producers probably decided to keep Michelle low key for a while until some time had passed before they began using her heavily again. Unfortunately though Michelle has never actually had a really successful storyline. The triangle with Sean and Sonny wasn't too great, The baby switch was a complete disaster and she was upstaged by Becky who took Steve McDonald away from her and left her adrift so they really have a lot of work cut out for them if they want Michelle as a central character. The only thing that seems to save Michelle from the chopping block is Marsh's high profile status.

(Sorry to go off topic but I felt I had to answer this) You're thinking of the local content quota laws which were first introduced in 1989 (several years after Neighbours was axed and then brought back). Since 1996 (between 1989 and 1996 it was 35%) 55% of programs broadcast on Australian commercial free to air TV between 6am and Midnight have to be Australian or New Zealand made (Australian court ruling in 1996 said that NZ programs could be counted as locally made because of the Closer Economic Relations treaty but understandably the Australian TV industry kicked up a massive stink about it and as a result there is I believe a gentleman's agreement amongst the networks not to count NZ programming). The quota especially benefits Neighbours because Network Ten would have to find a replacement for it and so far Network Ten's attempts to launch other soaps have failed (Echo Point, Breakers etc). Anyways, back to Hollyoaks...

Whitney is basically Bianca's de-facto step-daughter (as Bianca and Whitney's dad were never married I don't think) whom Bianca has been raising for nearly eight years. The back story for Bianca and Whitney is that a few weeks after sleeping with Ricky during the Ricky and Bianca spin-off in 2002, Bianca met Whitney's father Nathan who was a trucker. Whitney was only about 9 at this point and Whitney's mother Debra had abandoned her and Nathan some years previously. Bianca soon learned that she was pregnant, but wasn't 100% sure if the baby was Ricky's or Nathan's. She decided to make a go of things with Nathan but Nathan ended up being killed in a Traffic accident when Bianca was seven months pregnant. After Nathan's death, Bianca became Whitney's legal guardian. Soon afterwards Bianca gave birth to Tiffany, who was assumed to be Nathan's daughter and thus Whitney's half-sister, although last year Bianca finally did a DNA test which showed that Ricky was Tiffany's father not Nathan. Whitney did not learn of this until several months later and was angry at first but came to terms with it. And just to add, Ryan is Whitney's half-brother. He is Debra's son.

Thank the soap gods! While I always liked

What I found most interesting was Eric Pollard going around asking "have you seen my wife, Elizabeth Pollard?' over and over again. It's either... A; Shock over the plane crash and truly not knowing where his wife is (ie: he didn't kill Elizabeth, the plane crash did) B: Shock over the fact that he'd killed his wife and then then witnessed a plane crash on the same night, causing him to forget he killed Elizabeth. C: The biggest con that conman has ever pulled (he's killed Elizabeth and is now using the plane crash to conveniently account for her disappearance) Its a mystery Emmerdale has never resolved.

Just got done watching the infamous Emmerdale Plane crash. As to be expected the special effects are a bit dated (though would hold up well against more recent special effects on US Daytime shows) but it was still a good storyline nonetheless. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hx5TtIwy01s The disaster starts in part 2... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J5V_R_H9Gt0

lol that reminds me of when the cast actually did SGT Peppers for Children in Need in 2007...wonder if that is still on youtube?

Shane and Angel were the teen supercouple of the show during the mid 1990s. I guess they were to Home and Away what Greg and Jenny were to All My Children. Angel definitely stood out amongst the teens in an era where the other teens (Sarah, Tug, Damian, Finlay) were quite bland and somewhat boring and the classic teens of the late 80s, early 90s (Bobby, Frank, Steven, Carly, Sophie) had gone. Melissa George and Dieter Brummer carried a significant portion of the show during 1993 and 1996 (particularly during the first half of 1994 when Isla Fisher's Shannon and Tempany Deckert's Selina hadn't been introduced yet and Kate Ritchie's Sally was still too young to have significant storylines of her own).

Ada Nicomdemou and Bernard Curry are currently in New Zealand for our first proper national telethon in 16 years, so props to them EDIT: And now Bernard is in a dress.

yeah that's another good point...the whole situation is weird. If TPTB knew he was only staying for the length of his contract why on earth would they marry him off to one of the show's longest serving characters and embark on a long term story arc involving surrogacy...hopefully this means that they have planned for this eventuality in advance and get a great storyline out of it.

Heard this news a few weeks ago but didn't bother posting then but...

Yeah and apparently it's all the girl's fault for allowing Lincoln Lewis to have it on his phone. Like, whatever!

The baby has downs syndrome which was why Honey was so depressed and was thinking about killing her (though yeah I guess Honey did have a sort of Post Partum Depression, its just that the show never explicitly said that it was Post Partum Depression. Probably because they didn't want to send out the message that PPD only happens when something is wrong with the baby).

Yeah I think Neighbours is quite good at the moment although I know that reactions are still mixed. I did like the Zeke storyline although it is a bit cliched. Its good that Zeke has finally come into his own as a character after pretty much playing supporting act to Rachel and the other teens for the past three years. I do like Rebecca too (and I hope that Jane Hall and Kym Valentine have sorted out their rumoured issues).

Damn I knew someone would come along to burst my bubble lol. I really do think it is a bit of a cop out by the producers, not only because of the whole lesbian storyline but also because of the rape as well. IMO Six weeks is simply not long enough to do a decent storyline on both issues and lumping them together in such a short arc reeks of sensationalism. I do think you are right though about Charlie being the most important thing about this storyline and her continuing to explore her feelings where men and women are concerned would go a long way.

Such a cruel ending to an interesting tale (which hasn't even begun to play out here in New Zealand yet as we are still seing episode from June of last year, slowly catching up at the rate of one episode per week since its on five days a week here). I can't help thinking of the imaginary lyrics that Bill Bailey (probably best known on these forums for playing Maxxie Oliver's father on Skins) made up for the EastEnders theme tune "Everyone is going to die, we're all going to die, in a variety of different ways"

I hope Joey sticks around for a while and becomes a regular character. In the past, both Neighbours and Home and Away tend to introduce gay. lesbian and minority characters for short stints only to wirte them out permanently once their initial storyline is up.

I can't help thinking that anyone who has never heard of the show before will see that promo will think its a sci Fi series about robots lol but regardless, yeah the EastEnders promos are always great lol! Love this one and the Max one and the Bianca ones from a year ago too.