The latest victim is little Amber Chadwick, who plays Amy Barlow, the old-beyond-her-years offspring of Steve McDonald and Tracy Barlow in Coronation Street. The beautiful and demented Tracy was charged with murder last week following the death by ornament of her young beau, the beautiful and demented Charlie Stubbs, although it seems that there may not be a jury in the whole of England who will convict her. (One feels about the death of Charlie much as one does about the death of Saddam Hussein: we shall weep no tears but, cripes, what a way to go. ) Young Amy did not witness the murder, but was instead subjected to a far more brutal ordeal - the Barlow family inquest which followed it. This is what life is like on Hysteria Lane. Deirdre, her neck pulsing and vibrating as though she'd swallowed a bag of wriggling kittens; Blanche, propagating her unique brand of verbal poison; Peter, his neck and eye red from a previous beating from Charlie; Ken, meek as a lamb, singlehandedly defeating the proposition that it's good for children to have a male authority figure about the place: all gathered in the one small room, along with young Amy, doing a very good impression of a family torn apart.

What do four-year-old actors get told in situations like this? Don't worry that the adults have suddenly turned into a raging band of lunatics, because it's all just make believe? Pay no attention about that reference to Charlie deserving to die because, of course, nobody deserves to die? Not even Saddam Hussein. That nice lady who gave you sweets a few minutes ago isn't really the angry harridan you see before you now?

One presumes that there are guidelines for this sort of thing, to stop children being hurt and frightened by their experiences as actors. But how does a four-yearold distinguish between the increasing madness of soap opera scripts and what is optimistically called real life? How does she process the pulp philosophy of a Blanche Hunt and separate it from the more positive approach she might be getting elsewhere?

There must be a media studies thesis in there somewhere.