Soaps are definitely a guilty pleasure for us Brits, whether we choose to admit it to our friends and family or not. You can guarantee that even among the friends who claim that they don’t watch any of them at all, a couple will have them set on Series Link on their Sky Plus systems, or they’ll be catching up on their laptops whenever they think nobody is around.
There’s no reason for them to be a guilty pleasure though. After all, they’ve been around for so long now that they’re a part of British television – what would we do without them between Hollyoaks starting at 6:30, followed by EastEnders and Emmerdale, and finally Coronation Street each night?
We’d almost have to talk to each other!
While everybody will have their own favourite, and it’s usually down to where you live in the country thanks to location of the “big three” soaps, there are stars from each one that we can all relate to, especially as students. It’s a great way to kick-off an evening or to entertain yourselves while having your dinner before you head out for a much-needed “study break!”
Even if you’re a die-hard Coronation Street fan, you might still like the fact that a certain character is in EastEnders for example, and perhaps that’s why some of the names at the top of a recent survey made by Great British Bingo revealed some genuine household names from British entertainment at the top.
Despite Hollyoaks being the first to come on each evening on Channel 4, it wasn’t actually the Chester-based soap which produced the favourite character – it wasn’t even close in fact despite a lot of the audience being made up of students or graduates.
EastEnders, the long-running drama set in the East End (as the name suggests) produced the top three in the poll, 5 out of the top 10 and 9 out of the top 20 with cheeky-chappy Danny Dyer topping the list with 24 votes out of the survey of nearly 200 members of the British public.
Dyer, who made his name in films and documentaries before making the jump to the world of soaps in December 2013 (despite famously saying he would NEVER appear in a soap), became an instant hit with viewers when he took on the role of Mick Carter; and he even picked up a National Television Award earlier this year for Best Serial Drama Performance.
He even managed to pip two long-standing EastEnders favourites to the top spot, with Dot Cotton, played by June Brown, and Phil Mitchell, played by Steve McFadden forced to settle for second and third with 15 and 14 votes respectively.
Then you can really tell where the student votes kick in! A lot of the other names tended to come for younger or more recent additions to the squares and streets of soap world.
Michelle Keegan, who played Tina McIntyre in Coronation Street before being killed off was the highest-placed Corrie star and Emmerdale’s latest bad-boy Ross Barton, played by Mike Parr, is also among the nation’s favourites.
There are still places for some of the longer-standing characters in the list, with Ken Barlow, Peggy Mitchell, Gail Platt, Alfie Moon and Stacey Slater all inside the top 25.
Don’t worry Hollyoaks fans, there were single votes for all of Mercedes, Maxine, Theresa and Cindy!
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