VERA Duckworth never came to Bournemouth. She may never even have set foot in Dorset. And it's a cinch that no one living here has ever met her because she's a fictional character in the world's longest-running TV soap.

But that didn't stop millions of us from tuning in last night to share the shock of screen husband Jack, when his beloved little swamp duck' died and was taken away from Coronation Street for the last time.

Yesterday the Daily Echo spoke to some Bournemouth Corrie fans. They all vowed to watch Vera's exit. "Definitely, it's as big a thing for the Street as when Hilda Ogden left," said one. And the Bournemouth and West Hampshire Water company said they expected a mid-programme demand surge, as viewers rushed to the bathroom or to make a cup of tea.

When Hilda left in December 1987, 26.7 million people - more than a third of the population - switched on to watch. It was Corrie's biggest audience ever. And, after she went, it was reported that fans had turned up to a doctor's house in the Derbyshire village where they believed Hilda - but not actress Jean Alexander who played her - had gone.

Why do we do it? Well, believability plays its part.

Liz Dawn, who plays Vera, says of her: "People seem to find it easy to relate to her. I've had so many people say they have a neighbour or a friend just like Vera. Inside, I am Vera - I'm still that girl from Yorkshire."

And TV critic Toby Earle says: "Vera and Jack's relationship was the core of the show. In her heyday, Vera stole the show, she was an absolute star."

Big screen exits from soap operas are usually conducted to boost ratings, or, occasionally, to punish uppity stars. In Vera's case it is because Liz Dawn has fallen seriously ill with the lung condition emphysema.

"I always said that I'd like to pass away in the snug of the Rovers, wearing big bloomers and drinking milk stout, with Jack saying She's gone a funny colour'," she joked in one of her interviews.

There were plans to have her in a retirement home and able to make the odd, fleeing re-appearance. But Vera and the show's production team decided a respectful ending was best and Vera's fate was sealed.

The death of Vera - who first bounced down the Corrie cobbles in 1974, to work alongside big-mouthed Ivy Tilsley at Mike Baldwin's factory - won't only rob the show of a great character who enjoyed all sorts of adventures, from being conned out of large sums of money to discovering she was a distant cousin of Prince Charles!

Along with Vera will go a whole era of trademarks, including the migraine-inducing Duckworth wallpaper, the old-fashioned furniture and the infamous stone cladding which appeared in 1989.

Vera's Kevin Keegan bubble perm defined an era and even though it was ditched some years ago, it's what she will be best remembered for. Dawn once told an interviewer she had adopted what she considered a glamorous stage name and ending up playing a "hard-up housewife with hair like Harpo Marx". And one of TV's best-loved characters.