The kitchen sink has totally dominated English sensibilities for years now. Eastenders purports to reflect 'real lives' and promote catharsis but that reality is as much a fiction as Brief Encounter or The Greengage Summer. It's mostly either Japanese style torture tv or a bedlam tour. I've almost totally given up television, seen about three programmes this year on my son's telly. Wretched, desparate stuff the lot of it.

I have a personal bit of Tommy Cooper lore. Walking through the back alleys of the West End in the early hours a little the worse for wear minding my own business but with nobody much about when a side door opened next to me and a figure stepped out.
'Goodnight' it said.
Odd in itself for central London and it sounds like Tommy Cooper. It was. He raised a hand and smiled and I did the same back and went on my way. The next night he was dead. Nice chap and very funny.