Bradford and the rest of Britain seems to have forgotten its own troubles in deference to those of poor Deirdre Rachid. T&A TV critic David Behrens asks why the lives of the soap stars seem so close to home.

It was quite a year for Weatherfield.

There was a gas leak at Albert Tatlock's house; Elsie Tanner was knocked down by a taxi, and Stan and Hilda Ogden were invaded by mice.

Diverted by high drama such as this, hardly anyone noticed the new secretary who started work at Ray Langton's builder's yard.

It was 1973, and Deirdre Hunt was then considered to be something of a dolly bird.

She had her pick of Coronation Street's eligible bachelors, but as the world now knows, our Deirdre had a fatal attraction for all the wrong ones.

First, her engagement to Annie Walker's son Billy collapsed; her subsequent marriage to Ray Langton went the same way.

Moving in with Ken Barlow was another mistake, but at least her affair with Mike Baldwin won her a friendship that would cushion her through the financial tribulations to come.

In 1994, Deirdre fell for a waiter called Samir Rachid while on holiday in Morocco. But their marriage ended in tragedy, when he was pushed off a canal towpath while on his way to donate an organ to Deirdre's ailing daughter, Tracey.

That, you may think, would be heartbreak enough for any person. But it is Deirdre's latest romantic entanglement, with a heartless conman called Jon, that has been her unmaking. On Sunday night, a public bench filled with 19 million people watched as a judge told her that she was the instigator and manipulator of a heinous fraud and that she must serve 18 months at Her Majesty's Pleasure.

"I'm not guilty," she sobbed behind enormous spectacles, as the bailiff took her down - but her friends knew that anyway.

It sounds like the plot of a soap opera, and of course, it is the plot of a soap opera - but it's at times like these that the line which separates fact from fiction seems not to matter.

Those regulars at the Station pub in Harecroft, just outside Wilsden, knew fine well the other day, when they got up a petition calling for her release, that Deirdre wasn't a real person.

But because their lives are played out in real-time, before an audience of almost everyone, the long-running characters in our favourite soaps are sometimes as close to us as our own families.

Deirdre (or the Weatherfield One, as she's now known at The Station in Harecroft) is not the first character to benefit from an outpouring of emotion by people who really should know better.

It was at Christmas 1996 that Susan Carter, an everyday housewife in a village of everyday folk, became the hero of penal reform groups everywhere.

Sent to jail unjustly (though the quality of mercy in this case was open to debate) and separated from her family at the beginning of the festive season, her sorry plight engendered outrage - real, genuine outrage - right across Britain.

Susan Carter was a character in The Archers, and because The Archers is on Radio Four and enjoys an influential, up-market audience, it wasn't long before questions were being asked in the highest of places.

The then Home Secretary, Michael Howard, said it was unthinkable that a first-time offender would be treated in such a way by a real court - but several cases soon came to light which proved him wrong.

This week, politicians are once again clamouring for action, confident that by doing so, they will be currying favour with millions of voters all at once.

Tony Blair went on national radio on Tuesday morning to support the campaign for Deirdre's release. Fraser Kemp, Labour MP for Houghton and Washington East, said he would draw the Home Secretary's attention to what he called a gross miscarriage of justice.

This, however, will not help the luckless Deirdre, whose fate lies not in the hands of the legal system but in those of the scriptwriters at Granada Television.

"If this were a real case, we'd assume she was guilty," says Governor Paul Foweather at Askham Grange Women's Open Prison near York, who watched the events of the weekend and empathised.

"Anyone who is convicted by a court, we consider to be guilty."

But new prisoners such as Deirdre are, he adds, given counselling and a free phonecard.

If the Weatherfield One is wondering who to call with hers, she'd do well to find Mike Plowman's name in the phone book.

A native of Little Horton, Bradford, and now a businessman in Oxfordshire, Mike is arguably Britain's biggest and best informed Coronation Street fan. He did, after all, know Deirdre's fate 48 hours before she did.

"Last Friday night, I announced on my web site that I knew what the verdict was but that I wasn't going to tell anyone," he says. "I got 120 E-mails from people all over the world demanding to know."

Mike runs one of several unofficial Coronation Street Internet sites, which are for the most part tolerated, though not sanctioned, by Granada.

"The response from around the world to Deirdre's imprisonment has been phenomenal," he says. "People in Canada are up in arms and they won't even see the episode for another eight weeks.

"It's actually quite unexpected. I didn't think it was that hot a storyline - but when something like this happens to a major character, people who don't watch regularly will suddenly tune in, as if they're visiting an auntie they don't see very often.

"All the long-standing characters in Coronation Street are like family to the general public."

Mike is obviously well connected at Granada, so what, pray, can he tell us about Deirdre's future? Can she sink lower still?

The truth is that no-one has decided yet. The subsequent episodes haven't been filmed, and until such time as the script is committed to video tape, the plot can be changed at will.

Nevertheless, Mike is in on the informed speculation. Those who don't wish to speculate may care to stop reading right here.

"I think she'll be out in two to two-and-a-half months," he says. "She's supposed to be serving 18 months, but it's rumoured that Jon's wife will be racked with guilt and remorse, and she'll come forward. She'll go and see Ken who'll then persuade her to go to the police."

So it's a happy ending? With Deirdre involved, that seems most unlikely.

Net-heads can contact Mike Plowman at: http://ds.dial.pipex.com/town/plaza/ec91/index.shtml.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.