tv critic and soap fan emma bullimore is here, and charles collingwood, who's been farming, flirtingigging into his wife's venison pie for a whopping 47 years as brian in the archers. welcome to you all and thanks for coming on the show. phil, if we start with you, all the big soaps — eastenders, coronation street, emmerdale — have seen huge drops in audience numbers in recent years. you've criticised soaps for not tackling big social issues like they used to. do you think it's the end of the road for them? i think in the current climate, it looks quite pessimistic, but i believe that they shouldn't be, because you have to go all the way right back to the cave drawings and people have always had this insatiable desire for storytelling. and, you know, you can run all the way through history, through the greek tragedies, etc, through shakespeare, through dickens. people always want original storytelling. they want original drama. and i think everybody, even now, if you look across the streamers and the film industry, they're all looking for long runners. they're looking for things that