I’ve watched Eastenders regularly ever since it first appeared on UK screens on February 19th 1985 and it’s one of those programmes that I watch despite being fed up with the misery and gloom generally seen on there.

I was really cheesed off last week when they killed off Danielle just as Ronnie realised that she was Danielle’s birthmother. This was after 7 months of will she or won’t she tell Ronnie. At times Ronnie was downright nasty to her unknown daughter and I thought ‘if only you knew’.  Danielle’s character gradually turned into a whining annoying teenager who needed putting out of her misery, but not by a car.

What I would have liked to see was Danielle telling Ronnie months earlier and the building up of a relationship between new found mother and daughter. It happens in the real world and is a more likely scenario than the high drama of Danielle’s death.

Now we are left with Ronnie who suffered with loss and guilt for years after her father made her give up Danielle and being told by her evil father Archie that she was dead, now having to come to terms with the loss a second time. Not to mention what she will feel about helping her unknown daughter abort her grandchild.

That’s a whole lot of misery for us to watch, but soap writers do not like to give us any happy ever after storylines. They keep the viewing figures up with high drama, disasters and misery. You can’t have a soap birth or wedding without something going wrong and Peggy’s wedding went so wrong it was unbelievable and didn’t mirror true life.

At least we were all able to enjoy manipulater Archie’s comeuppance. He was one mean piece of work, but then so is his missus Peggy so perhaps they deserved each other. Archies manipulations were so obvious to all of us who viewed the programme, yet Peggy and all of those around her except for Pat only noticed at the last minute.

Asking her son Phil to kill her new husband was pure evil and taking Peggy’s character to an all time low. Would anybody right in their head ask their child to murder from them and then turn against them when they don’t. No way, but Phil doesn’t get my sympathy.

Heck he’s been at mummy’s beck and call for too long, he needs to cut those apron strings and concentrate on his cute son Ben not his mother. The attempts at making him look menacing when threatening Archie after kidnapping him just didn’t work for me. Now we hear that the alchoholic in him is going to come out again, poor Ben he doesn’t deserve such horrible relatives.

Then we’ve had the Branning marriage break up and Lauren trying to kill her father. It looks like that horrible slimey Max is going to worm his way back into Tanyas bed – a disaster waiting to happen!

Pretty Whitney is going through the aftermath of being abused and Ricky gets verbally abused by his ex Bianca despite helping her with her family.

Eastenders writers – please give us some happy storylines that reflect real life and more humour, give us more normal families. If it wasn’t for the Masoods, Mo Harris, Jane Beale and her brother Christian the programme would be totally miserable and not worth watching.