I React To A Bad Neighbours Article

I've just read a shockingly written article about Neighbours on the Mirror website.

You can tell, just by how it's written, that the reporter hasn't watched the series in many, many years and is bluffing their way through an article.

It's about the soap's thirty-fifth anniversary and notes that Jason Donovan's daughter is a cast member. However, the journo - and I use that term loosely - writes:

'she will be the third member to join the soap as her grandfather Terence had a brief stint on it'

First things first, Jason Donovan's daughter - Jemma - has been in the series for at least six months already so it's 'she is the third member' of the Donovan clan to be a part of the show.

Present tense!

But, it's the thing about Terry Donovan's 'brief stint' that gets me.

Doug Willis was a regular character on the soap from July 1990 right up until September 1994. That's not 'brief'. As I said, he was a regular.

He did make 'brief stints' in the years following, but he was a darn regular and four years in a soap is not brief!

Another one that made me roll my eyes was the line which read (punctuation and typo included):

'And fans will be elated to know that the soap's OG's Olympia Valance - who plays Paige Smith - and enise Van Outen - who plays Prue Smith - will be coming back to the show for the special event'.

The writer is evidently unaware that Denise Van Outen was only in the show recently as a guest character and must assume she was a major character when she wasn't. Plus, the hype she gave Olympia Valance's return makes me wonder whether she has confused Olympia with her bigger - and more popular - sister, Holly Valance, who starred in the series as Felicity Scully between 1999 and 2002.

I guess Holly's three years on the show was too much of a brief stint to remember.