Good Evans!

Once you cross the border and leave the safety of Soapland, the real world is likely to intrude. But if you've gotta go, you've gotta go is Big Pat Evans' outlook on life. Give her a pair of big dangly ear-rings and she's anyone's.

That letter she's seen reading in EastEnders (BBC1) offers a clue to the reason for her awayday to the Sarf Coast, where she discovers that Brighton's bitch and her idea of being a Brighton belle are shattered.

Enough of the wordplay, poor Pat has been discarded at a motorway service station like an empty packet of crisps. Shirley and her friend Heather drive off and abandon her.

Happily, Big Pat gets picked up (which isn't easy - they don't call her Big Pat for nothing) by handsome stranger Len, a man who looks like that bloke Burnside in The Bill.

Good Evans, Pat, what are you thinking of getting into a car with a strange man. Just watch out he doesn't try to grope your leg when he changes gear.

Her destination in Brighton is not the end of the pier to buy a Kiss Me Quick hat (the quicker the better, before you see her) but a Victorian house where her sister lived before her death. But what is the secret of this bleak house? Perhaps Pat's mad twin sister (perish the thought) is locked in the attic.

If Pat and new admirer Len take a stroll along the prom, they'll bump into someone they know. Gormless Garry has come to his home town of Brighton with Dawn.

Garry reckons he's onto a sure thing as a mix-up over hotel reservations means he and Dawn are sharing a double bed. His hopes are dashed when she dumps baby Summer on him (and baby Summer promptly dumps on him) and goes shopping.

One thing leads to another, and Garry finds Dawn in bed with another man. His reaction is odd, to say the least. He asks her to marry him. It could have been worse - he could have asked the man to marry him. Then he gets more upset when he bumps into best friend Minty, who has a secret assignation with new love Hazel - who just so happens to be Garry's mum.

The prospect of Minty being his stepdad doesn't go down well with Garry who promptly smacks him in the mouth.

Things aren't much quieter in Soapland, where there's someone on the roof of Underworld in Coronation Street (ITV1). No, it's not Father Christmas getting his dates muddled up because of all the glaciers melting at the North Pole.

The figure threatening to jump is Demonic David Platt, who's gone up in the world after being humiliated over his crush on Mel. She stood him up on a date thanks to the meddling of his sister Sarah and he doesn't like being made a fool of.

Sarah's fiance Jason, the builder who's as thick as the bricks he lays, joins him on the roof, only to become more worried when David starts taking imaginary potshots at his mother Gail. He explains that it's always been a fantasy of his to shoot his mother.

There's a new attraction in Soapland over at Emmerdale (ITV1) where Jo Stiles has opened a petting corner at Butler's Farm. This seems entirely appropriate for a community where people are forever getting friendly in a sexual way.

First into the petting corner could be Paul Lambert, who isn't the only gay in the village. Not content with having Jonny-Come-Lately as a boyfriend, he's been soliciting solicitor Grayson Sinclair, a man who, like a pendulum, swings both ways.