Fair dinkum mate – the BBC‘s 21 year romance with Australian soap Neighbours has finished. The show’s distributor Fremantle Media was reputed to be asking for a deal costing £300m for eight years – streuth! That’s a bit of a hike on the £25,000 the corporation currently coughs up per episode, with their highest bid of £70,000 rejected. Five are believed to be in the hunt for the newly available show (well they’re hardly fussy, remember Sunset Beach?) with the show disappearing from BBC scheduling in spring of next year.

What will the BBC do now that the jewel in their daytime programming has gone? More property/ antiques/ elderly detective shows? Mmm, can’t wait for that. And so the BBC waves a fond farewell to Ramsey Street, with maybe just a small tear in it’s eye (dismissing it as a bit of dirt as that’s what people do when pretending not to cry.) The home of Scott and Charlene, Madge and Harold and that theme tune – we hope you will be happy in your new home, wherever that may be.