Mancunian bias, dodgy theories – but this groaning table of northern relish has flavour to spare

After tears, fears, bush tucker trials, fake tan and hugs, the Coronation Street star is out of there

There are occasions when only Gary Barlow, Grace Jones and a hula hoop will do. Fortunately, those occasions only come round every 60 years, so it's important to have something else to listen to in the meantime. And while BBC Radio 2 lined up a seamless flotilla of Jubilee programmes – Sixty Amazing Years segueing into We Are Sixty and then a 60 years-themed Sunday Half-Hour with music from the choir of the Queen's Chapel of the Savoy on Sunday alone, there were odd pockets of airtime that offered a more leftfield perspective on the damp pyrotechnics of the long weekend, if not ever managing to ignore them entirely.

What happens in the dark is not for gossiping or bragging about in the light

The soap world's "Oscars" take place tonight, as Coronation Street, EastEnders, Hollyoaks, Emmerdale and Doctors battle it out for gongs.

Actor Sir Derek Jacobi has joined the list of illustrious names to have appeared in ITV’s long-running soap opera, Coronation Street.

The horrific details of how Daniel Bartlam murdered his mother with a claw hammer must have been music to the ears of the anti-video-games lobby. It seemed that the teenager's homicidal onslaught can be held up as proof – at last! – that the depiction of violence leads to acts of violence.

I was amused to see a credit for an Etiquette Consultant in the programme for the National Theatre's new She Stoops to Conquer.

EastEnders won its head-to-head battle with Downton Abbey as BBC1 kept with tradition by coming out on top in the Christmas Day ratings.

They will be digging up and transporting the cobbles when Britain's longest-running soap opera, Coronation Street, moves to a new home in 2012. The Street, which has had a special place in the national culture since the cameras first panned across Weatherfield's rooftops half a century ago, is moving to the glittering, glass new media complex.

Rovers Return landlady Beverley Callard is to leave Coronation Street next year, it was announced today.

Coronation Street landed a pair of world records today as it prepares to mark its 50th birthday.