Classic soap opera, Brookside, will be back on our TV screens this later month to mark the 25th anniversary of Channel 4.

The show first aired in the UK in 1982, and the first ever episode will be shown on More 4 on the 30th September.

Also to be screened again are the films Walter starring Sir Ian McKellen as a mentally handicapped man and The Comic Strip Presents… Five Go Mad In Dorset with Adrian Edmondson, Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders.

Brookside has a lot to answer for…..without it we may have been spared the crooning of Ray Quinn! But in fairness, in it’s day Brookside was a great soap, daring to air storylines that other soaps only dreamt of (who remembers Anna Friels’ lesbian scenes?)

What I didn’t know was that unlike other soap operas, Brookside was not filmed on a set, but on a real life middle class cul-de-sac.

In 2003, after the show had gone down the pan, the houses were sold off to a property developer and although the houses have not been fully renovated as yet, some clever sod has taken their video camera down to the street and provided us with the eerie footage of the deserted close below………You see, this is where Sinbad belongs! Not on Coronation Street!