RYAN is heartbroken in Coronation Street (ITV1). Don’t know why really. Terrible Tracy has turned down his marriage proposal, so if I was him I’d be thanking my lucky stars that I’d had a narrow escape.

Walking down the aisle with her would be like entering the lion enclosure at London Zoo. He’d be eaten alive by Tracy, a girl with a penchant for bashing men over the head with large objects. Just ask Charlie the builder with the big toolbox. Oh, sorry, you can’t – she bashed him over the head with a large object and killed him.

Little does Ryan know that Tracy has only been going out with him to spite ex-hubby Steve McDonald’s now-ex girlfriend, Michelle, who is Ryan’s mother. Steve suggests the proposal in a bid to expose Tracy’s true intentions and get Ryan out of her wicked clutches.

Anyway, as I was saying, Ryan is heartbroken and goes on a bender, which in some circles would be taken as a signal that he was changing his sexual priorities, but here simply means he gets very, very drunk. And he takes drugs and he gets into a fight, using up a year’s supply of Soapland storylines in one episode.

There’s more. His faithful friend, Sophie, goes along to make sure he doesn’t get into trouble. She doesn’t do a very good job of it what with all the fighting, drug-taking and drunkenness.

When he starts playing chicken with traffic on a busy road, she tries to stop him and, of course, gets mown down herself. She ends up in hospital suffering from one of Soapland’s most common afflictions – lifethreatening injuries. It could mean she’ll be left paralysed.

Fill the Fug’s record as a father would never win him a dad of the year competition. But here he is in EastEnders (BBC1) getting all coochy-coo over a baby.

The infant is Lexi, who’s been taken away from troubled teenage single mum Lola.

She’s distraught. So upset that she tells Fill that the father of the child is none other than his gay son Evil Ben, currently enjoying her majesty’s pleasure (and anyone else who shares his cell) for murdering Big Hevv. The good news is that the charge is reduced to manslaughter (Hevv-slaughter, surely). The bad news is that Fill wants to tell his son that he’s a daddy.

The thought of Fill taking in her baby makes Lola even more distraught. Sharon’s hardly over the moon either because Fill involves her in his baby-snatching plan. He wants her to pose as his partner so he can bring Lexi home.

This causes much lip-trembling by Sharon.

But she can’t refuse because she owes him.

After all, he helped rescue her son Dennis after she fled her recent wedding and the bridegroom held young Dennis hostage. So her childcare record is hardly unblemished.

Over in Emmerdale (ITV) the repercussions of this week’s terrible events (and I don’t just mean the Woolpack running dry) continue to reverberate throughout the community. The Soapland police plod around investigating a murder, while Nikhil worries that Gennie isn’t coping with motherhood.

She could always trying selling the baby to Fill.