Yer ’avin’ a laugh, intcha?

'Ang on a minute - yer 'avin' a laugh, intcha?

The Square of Squalor? Famous for hordes of rampaging tea-leafs, slappers and all manner of dodgy geezers? Surely there's some mistake, guvnor?

Mangy, salivating dogs lurk around every corner - and the pets aren't up to much either.

The kids - all illegitimate and mostly illiterate - loathe their step-parents (none of them live with the people who actually gave birth to them) and can only get to school if kind "Auntie" Pat Butcher (who, everyone seems to forget, was a prostitute) takes them there.

Mind you, the school run stops being a problem as soon as they become teenagers because the girls just get up the duff and the boys do time.

And as for life expectancy, it's a case of one wedding and loads of funerals as Death (aka the producer) stalks the manor on a daily basis.

Most common way to go is by getting done in, usually by being bludgeoned to death by a heavy, blunt instrument (Dirty Den courtesy of a cast-iron dog-shaped doorstop, Saskia by an industrial-sized ashtray).

If you do happen to die accidentally, the most common cause is being run over by a car, which, considering the only people on The Square who own a motor are Charlie the cabbie, the Brannings, Phil Mitchell and whoever happens to be running the pub at the time, really is the height of bad luck.

Apart from all the death and destruction, there's a dreadful lack of shops.

Which explains why, as well as not having new-fangled contraptions such as cars, none of the residents appear to have a washing machine as they all go round the launderette to freshen up their smalls, or a cooker because they eat every meal either in the Queen Vic (and where, can anyone tell me, is the kitchen?) or in the caff.

And don't even get me started on the clothes.

I mean, every street in the land has a New Look or a Next, but not Albert Square.

So regardless of age, colour or gender, the in-place to get your latest gear is from a single, rusting clothes rail at the market, where terrifying scraps of leopard-print polyester and sequinned nylon flap forlornly in the wind and the rain, waiting to be snapped up by anyone who is "going up West". Which isn't often.

For that special occasion meal, it's always the Indian restaurant - it used to be a little Italian trattoria until Death and the ratings stalked the De Marco family.

If anyone disappears for longer than a couple of weeks, it's always to Manchester; and if they are lucky enough to leave the place for good and alive, they always go by a red London bus - unless they're a major character, then they are allowed to get a cab (never Charlie's for some strange reason), and usually to Spain.

In fairness, the survey by Somerfield supermarkets did question viewers - 2,035 of them to be precise, in connection with other soaps - so compared to the rain-lashed, cobbled streets of Corrie and the faceless roads of Holly-oaks, perhaps The Square would be preferable.

At least there's a sense of community there and you know that, come Christmas Eve, you'll all put on your glitter tops from the market, gather round the old Joanna and belt out Roll Out The Barrel and My Old Man's a Dustman as your next-door neighbour is being battered to death with the bust of Queen Victoria...