PEGGY Snow passed away on Sunday. Her family gathered round her hospital bedside as she lay unconscious. They switched off the life support machine when she was declared brain dead. The funeral takes place in Skelthwaite next Sunday. Millions are expected to attend as the service is relayed to homes around the country.

Pam Ferris, who played Peggy, was given a grand send-off from the ITV series Where The Heart Is at the weekend. Some viewers faced a dilemma when the over-running Wimbledon men's final on BBC1 clashed with Peggy's departure but when a TV star's gotta go, they've gotta go.

Ferris wanted to leave the series and the producers decided to make her exit a memorable one. Her drawn-out departure was all very different to the recent wham, bam, thank you mam departure of Alison in Coronation Street. One minute she was kidnapping young Sarah Louise's infant, the next she was mown down off-screen by a thundering great lorry.

Not for her a prolonged dying scene like Peggy's where family members filed by the bed to say a tearful goodbye, ensuring there wasn't a dry eye in the house. Even my wife, who doesn't even like the series, sniffed her way through three tissues.

Hospital bed scenes are always guaranteed to boost ratings. Few could equal Emmerdale when Butch Dingle, dying from road accident injuries, married sweetheart Emily on his deathbed. It's not often scriptwriters manage to combine the twin elements of marriage and death in one scene. If only Emily had given birth as Butch breathed his last, it would have been soap perfection.

Ferris's exit was in contrast to that of Sarah Lancashire, another original star of Where The Heart Is. She was allowed to slip away to Australia - never to return.

It's a tricky business writing out favourite characters from soaps (and Where The Heart Is, no matter how much makers protest, is more soap than drama).

Coronation Street gained a reputation as a cosy place before the recent influx of underage pregnancy, murder and adultery. But it has always been a dangerous place, especially if your path crosses that of Ken Barlow. His first wife Valerie was electrocuted (by a hair dryer) and his second wife Janet committed suicide (barbiturate overdose). Third wife Deirdre didn't die although her next husband Samir did (after being beaten up) and, besides, marriage to Ken resembles a slow death by boredom.

Ken's mother Ida died under the wheels of a bus as she crossed the road. Weatherfield residents are not well versed in the highway code as the Street has also seen death by Blackpool tram (Alan Bradley), lorry (Renee Roberts, learning to drive), car (Len Fairclough in a crash), Don Brennan (when his taxi went into the Albert Dock), van (Harry Hewitt, crushed when a jack collapsed under the vehicle he was repairing) and road rage (Derek Wilton, heart attack after arguing with another motorist).

If a motorised vehicle doesn't get you, then armed robbers will. Ernest Bishop was blasted to death after Bishop Auckland-born actor Stephen Hancock, who played him, asked for a pay rise. Brian Tilsey (Middlesbrough-born Chris Quinten) was stabbed to death outside a nightclub although it's a wonder he hadn't expired years before from wife Gail's nagging.

Less violent, no less shocking, was the demise of pensioner Martha Longhurst who slumped dead over her glass of stout in the snug of the Rovers Return in 1964. Granada Television received wreaths, flowers and over 1,000 letters of sympathy, later admitting killing her off was a mistake.

Occasionally, people walk away from the Street rather than be carried out in a coffin. Hilda Ogden and Mavis Wilton were packed off to other parts of the country.

With so many major characters leaving EastEnders, writers have had to ration big death scenes or the cast would have spent the entire time wearing black and sobbing.

Tiffany was run over but Grant Mitchell was allowed to survive crashing his car into the Thames (while brother Phil tried to shoot him) and flee abroad. Bianca went to Birmingham and former lover Dirty Dan left on Monday thanks to Steve Owen.

Some have left the Square with no ceremony at all. PMT-stressed Jackie just drove off and never came back. Barmaid Nina, after being absent for several weeks, returned briefly to collect her bags and jump into a taxi to take her away from Walford.

Brookside blows up characters. Randy builder Greg Shadwick went out with a bang - having sex in the shower at the Millennium Club with Susannah. She survived, just as she came through the car crash which killed her two children.

The most unlikely explanation you'll find on the death certificate is natural causes. Few regular characters are allowed to die peacefully in their armchair like Alf Roberts in Coronation Street.

Some will meet unusual deaths like the Emmerdale residents hit by lumps of aircraft when a jet exploded over the village. Most unlikely of all, they'll be abducted by aliens as happened to Fallon in the glossy US soap The Colbys. And we never did find out what happened to her - the series was cancelled soon after her abduction.