YOU’D think that Gail the hamster would feel at home in a prison cell.

Surely being locked up in a small space with bars is her natural habitat.

Okay, so the authorities haven’t provided a wheel for her exercise but otherwise her new home away from Coronation Street (ITV1) has all mod cons. With the accent on cons.

She even has a new cellmate, making her think she’s strayed into an episode of Bad Girls. It’s a familiar face – Tracy Barlow who, as old lags will recall, was banged up for bashing her boyfriend. He was our old friend Charlie the builder with the big toolbox (and those are words I never thought I’d be able to use again).

Gail’s little face registers a look of surprise at seeing Tracy. It’s like bumping into Jennifer Lopez in Asda, the last person you expect to see in such circumstances. Soon the two bad girls are chatting away with Tracy quizzing Gail as one murderess to another.

She thinks she has something in common with the much-married Gail – they both killed their lovers.

Gail’s not so sure. She’s innocent of murder (although not, as frequently pointed out, of picking unsuitable husbands – a serial killer and insurance fiddler among them) and thinks that Tracy is taking far too great an interest in how Gail did away with Joe.

Terrible Tracy has an ulterior motive. She’s done a deal with Weatherfield Police to squeeze a confession out of Gail in return for early release. Or, if she doesn’t own up, to frame Gail for Joe’s watery demise.

I wish I could throw my weight in with Soapland’s newspaper Inside Soap (available now at all good newsagents – and a few bad ones too) which has launched a NO JAIL FOR GAIL! campaign.

The T-shirt is available soon, although whether it will gather the momentum of Dreary Deirdre’s Weatherfield One campaign remains to be seen.

One person with whom she won’t be sharing a cell is Mad Mary, the Misery-inspired woman whose pursuit of Norris Cole is as big a mystery as any Agatha Christie whodunit.

Thanks to Weatherfield’s PC Plods letting her go, she’s back on the cobbles and in hot pursuit of Norris. Perhaps it’s his aftershave – Eau de Weatherfield Canal – that’s making him irresistible to her.

Round in Walford, things are as jolly as in Weatherfield nick. Never mind volcanic ash, the fallout from Syed coming out continues to hang over Albert Square in EastEnders (BBC1).

Syed tries to kill himself with pills and booze. His mother Zainab is removing all traces of him from the family. She dumps his clothes and wedding album outside, then sets fire to them. She makes son Tamwar edit Syed and his wife Amira from the family portrait.

And she wants out of the business partnership with Ian Beale because his wife Jane is the sister of Christian who was Syed’s gay lover. But Syed’s father Masoon is having doubts about casting out his son, especially after the suicide bid.

It’s a not-very-gay day for ‘apless Aaron in Emmerdale (ITV1). The newly-out lad – perhaps he and Syed could get together – is in court, facing a charge of assaulting his potential lover Jackson Walsh.

He faces a jail sentence if he doesn’t own up to the attack being an attempt to cover up his gay leanings and not a homophobic assault on Jackson. I suggest he’s put in a cell with Gail – that would teach them both a lesson.