cymbaline

If they went down the road of taking all kids away, there'd be an awful lot of kids in care. Carly's father got on fine with his other daughter, though she had grown to become as vindictive as he was. Later on, Damien Roberts stayed with Irene even though Fin had run away from home. Jack Wilson was another one who was singled out for unfair treatment at home and ousted. No, Alan didn't know who Bobby really was. I wonder did the scriptwriters even know? Once you know, re-watching some of their scenes together is a bit icky.

I wonder what would they have done if they'd had to do the Pippa head-switch with Carol Willesee rather than Vanessa Downing? Debra Lawrance was only born the year before Vanessa so they're much the same age. One thing I noticed when watching Tom & Pippa and then Michael & Pippa is that the latter two seem more youthful. Even though there was quite an age gap between Roger and Vanessa, they were convincing as an older couple who'd been together a long time. It's funny now to think about Pippa being "mum" to Frank even though there's only a decade of an age gap between Vanessa and Alex Papps.

I wish they hadn't got rid of Barbara and Alan so soon. Both were good characters and still had plenty to give. Alan was the showier of the two but I thought Barbara was worth keeping around. It would've added a bit of spice to things if she'd continued to work in the school. They also could've had an interesting "it's complicated" relationship between her and Donald going forward. Instead of that, they put her to one side for years before bringing her back as a psycho.

She's referring to Rebecca and Alan. In episode 98 we hadn't even seen Alan yet. He didn't come along for another month or so.

I never said Bill wasn't entitled to an education. But was it right to send a young man with an obvious intellectual disability to a school that wasn't set up to help him properly? That was the point I clearly made a mess of making. I'm sorry if I offended you.

Did they ever say that he had autism? I don't know enough about the condition to spot the signs in Nico. I just assumed that they had given him something generic to suit the story. You're dead right about how badly the entire thing was treated. He should've been getting more help, though maybe having a non-English-speaking grandmother would always be a stumbling block. There'll always be louts like Lance and Martin in this world but Fisher was way out of line. When I started watching H&A from scratch a couple of years ago, I was surprised at how badly written Fisher's character was. Nico was just one person he was horrible to. They had Bill Cunningham (Luke's brother) a few years later. He had an acquired brain injury if I remember rightly. I haven't seen those episodes for a while but I remember that being handled better. He still had a rough time in school (not sure he should've been sent there) and I thought Michael was very hard on him when he broke into the house to see Fin. But it did touch on the issue of a teenage boy developing feelings for a girl of his own age despite being child-like in other ways.

If the Fletchers were to sell up and move to a seaside town these days, would they get as much bang for their buck? Their house in the city looked like a dingy dive of a place. They sold that and got a lovely big house and a caravan park near a beach.

Overcast, 11°C (51°F)

Thanks for filling in the gaps - I'd forgotten about that. Still though, it's something that'd be treated differently now.

Yes but that doesn't cancel the other out. Lance 'n Martin could've done with a good trashing.

Way back in the first season, Lance and/or Martin bored a hole in the wall of the shower block so they could spy on nekkid laydeez in there. My memories of those episodes are fuzzy now but I recall it being treated as something of a comedy story. Predictably, they messed up and had to evade the apoplectic partner of their first victim.

Roxanne could be pretty infuriating at times. The car storyline is a case in point. In the real world, it's eminently sensible to bring someone along with you when you're in the market for a second-hand car. Had she never seen The Big Steal? ? There were times when she was so pig-headed just for the sake of it. if they were to do a "where are they now?" about Roxanne, I think we'd find her running some sort of hippy yoga/sculpture retreat, where she sells alternative remedies on the side. She'd still be single and railing against the patriarchy.

My guess is that Carly ended up as a full-time mum for years, looking after the kids. I seem to remember her saying something along the lines of Ben being away a lot when she returned at a later date. That was probably the best solution for them to stay together. Even though Carly changed her mind about being an army wife, would her misgivings about that life really have dissipated? Ben's friends Dave and Pete certainly weren't good advertisements for the military and you'd hope Carly made some friends of her own.

That conjured up images in my mind of the McPhees taking the van for a joyride. It's always the ones you least expect.

Did Floss and Neville's gypsy van keep coming back to the caravan park? I remember Ben sold it to a neighbour in exchange for a goat but for some reason, I think it returned after that.

I'm not one to gossip but...

I think it was a hit on its own merits, rather than on the back of H&A. It did well in a lot of countries at the time, not just ones where Home and Away was shown. It's still the nearest thing to a tie-in I can think of.

I can't say I liked M People either but they're still on the go. Speaking of music, are there any songs that featured on Home and Away that made it out into the mainstream? I remember Suddenly by Angry Anderson being a big hit in the UK after Scott and Charlene's wedding on Neighbours. I can't think of any H&A songs that crossed over like that.

It was those pesky Fletchers who started the rot! Back when the show started, a foster family coming to town was thought to be quite exotic. That implies that drop-in centres weren't even on the horizon at the time. Then once the Fletchers moved to town, it became a magnet for every runaway in NSW.

Before that, Andrew Foley became a youth worker. That's what brought his relationship with Stacey Macklin to an end.

Now there's a question! I used to read Smash Hits at the time and they joked that she'd burned her mouth with some hot food or something equally daft. Speaking of screaming vocals, they used to use a remix of No Justice's Lately. Some of it might sound familiar, especially around here It's surprising No Justice's name is on the track at all because I can't hear very much of the original song or vocals at all.

INXS's New Sensation might be another one?

I think they sometimes played reworked tunes on the diner's jukebox because of rights issues. One of them was Madonna's Vogue, which would've been erm...en vogue at the time.

He was axed, but given 6 months notice about it. All that talk about Dennis minding their daughter and getting to act on stage again is just them putting a brave face on things. You've got to understand that 99% of the time, people don't leave their jobs (if they're good ones) just to babysit their kids during the daytime. It was not his choice to leave and he said it was a shock. I've watched interviews - old and new - with them and it's clear as day that they weren't happy about it. There's an interview with the two of them on that documentary Tristan Bancks made in the 1990s and their body language is very telling.

Pippa and Michael: They were a believable couple onscreen (can't imagine why lol) and it was ridiculous to widow Pippa twice in just six years. All for what? A year and a bit later they had to drum up a new victim love interest for Pippa so she could leave.