Our mad messageboard crowd have been listing the laws of soap. This is what they came up with:

1) No matter how poor you claim to be, you will still be able to go to the pub every night and get a round in.

2) All sex will end in simultaneous orgasm, and no one will ever compalin about Mr Droopy or period pains.

3) Your partner will shag your best friend within six weeks of their arrival.

4) All divorced people will sleep with their ex – normally the day before they marry someone else.

5) Weddings will never got to plan.

6) Births can only be on Christmas day or whenever someone else dies nearby.

7) When you get divorced, instead of starting a new life you will move to a dingy flat 50 yards away.

8) All members of the opposite sex must fancy the show’s star no matter how ugly the star is (see Phil Mitchell or Bet Lynch or Bev)

9) Babies must fall ill and be rushed to hospital at some point during their first three months of life.

10) All children under 12 will spend 90% of the time in the bedroom or eating beans and chips.

11) No one will ever cook breakfast.

12) People just standing around in the background of pubs do not obey any known laws of pub standing around.

13) As soon as children reach the age of 13 they mutate into a much older actor and develop a sociopathic disorder.

14) If a married woman has an affair, the cuckolded husband immediately becomes best friends with the bloke she’s sleeping with, and has always been best friends with him, regardless of all evidence to the contrary.

15) It never rains… but it pours.

16) No-one watches soap operas.

17) People can easily be placed into boxes marked “Good”, or “Bad”

18) All situations resolve themselves within a month.

19) If in doubt, give one of the characters amnesia.

20) There will be only one well-known, but usually quite small, venue that will be used for all events – weddings, christenings, birthdays, bar mitzvahs… etc.

21) Normal acoustics do not apply. People can talk normally in crowded nightclubs. Also, people can hear softly spoken conversations from across the room despite lots of people talking and the radio being on.

Neighbours-only rules:

22) When something dramatic has happened, the music fades up at the end of the scene while there is a close up on the affected party – which lingers far longer than any normal person would hold the same expression for.

23) If someone doesn’t live in Ramsey Street they are instantly EVIL. However, this fades depending on how long they spend on the show.

24) The more comfortable and open a gay character is about their sexuality, the less attractive they willll be (eg Lance in Brookside, Derek in EastEnders and Vince in Crossroads). This also explains why Nick from Hollyoaks becomes less appealing with each passing episode.

25) If you know a very private secret about someone, you will reveal it at the top of your voice in the Vic.

26) Hardly anyone goes to university, and if they do, it’s always a local one. This excludes Hollyoaks, which has a reasonably high student population, all of whom seem to live in nicer accommodation, wear nicer clothes, and generally spend more money on having exciting adventures, like being murdered, than real students.

27) Dogs never die of natural causes. They will always be run over.

28) Any pets or children can be passed on to new owners at any time.

29) People never buy alcohol from an off-license – it comes from the local pub.

30) Everyone listens to the same radio station.

31) The local paper always looks like something a infant school kid knocked up in a very poor word processing package.

32) You can blag your way into any job – from supermarket trolley man to solicitor.

40) The only music teenagers ever play loudly will be heavy rock with no lyrics.

41) If you develop a severe mental illness, eating disorder or pathology such as self harm, all symptoms will miraculously cease a fortnight after this fact is discovered. Unless you go to a clinic, where you will have no therapy but make a new best friend or fall in love with the one person who sees through all the bullshit.

And one of our own:

42) If you ever hug someone, you must always pull a face over their shoulder to indicate your secret displeasure.