Great soap is worth disdain of my son

FOR eight months I’ve watched dippy Danielle dithering about telling Ronnie she’s her dead daughter. It’s been like watching paint dry. But, loyally, I tune in and will her to end my misery: speak up or ship out.

Then, the night Peggy gets married, Danielle gets killed and Archie gets his comeuppance, where am I?

I’m out at the theatre, that’s where I am. Without, I might add, setting Sky to record the only episode of “EastEnders” worth getting excited about for years. Not since the gruesome threesome did away with Den Watts has there been an hour quite like it.

And I missed it. While the play was great (amateurs? Those who tread the boards at Shaw’s Playhouse2 don’t know the meaning of the word — I’ve seen far worse in the West End) it was still a disappointment to miss the action.

So I asked son number four where I could get an iViewer from.

He looked at me with that strange mixture of pity, incredulity and exasperation employed by teenagers the world over when faced by any question from the mouth of a mother.

“iViewer?” he echoes with disdain. “What on earth are you on about now?” Or words to that effect.

“iViewer,” I repeat as if saying something over and over again will miraculously make everything crystal clear. “iViewer — they tell you you can watch an episode you missed on iViewer,” I feel myself getting shrill.

“Who does?” he drawled, bored beyond distraction.

“The telly,” I say with not a little emphasis. “The people on the telly. When you’ve missed ‘EastEnders’ they say you can catch up with it on iViewer, and I don’t know where I can buy one.”

He studies me like I’m some sort of new — and very low — lifeform. “i-Play-er” he pronounces carefully, emphasising each syllable. He is, after all, talking to someone with a very low IQ.

“It’s iPlayer. And you don’t buy it. You just log on. On your computer.”

“Show me?” I’m not above begging.

He sighs. Stomps into the computer room (a grand name, it’s really the cupboard in the hall). He’s a tad irritated. The tutting, the sighing and the banging of keys is a clue.

He types something. Up pops “EastEnders”. More typing. Eureka! The missed episode is now playing on the PC screen.

I am none the wiser where to find iPlayer — but at least I didn’t make a complete ass of myself by going into Comet and asking someone else’s 17-year-old where I could buy one.

PS They shouldn’t have killed Danielle off you know, the scriptwriters could have had months more angst out of that storyline.