Cafe’s Roy still on a roll

SORRY to sound so drearily old- fashioned but I do feel the word “icon” is bandied about far too freely now. It used to be strictly for figures deserving of worship. Nowadays you’re as likely to hear it applied to, say, a gameshow host, or some bloke who’s in a rich vein of form at Milton Keynes Dons.

But CORONATION STREET ICONS: ROY CROPPER ( ITV, 8.30pm) is not a title I intend to argue with.

By soap standards, the Weatherfield cafe owner is indeed an almost saintly figure: noble, selfless, morally robust and infinitely kind.

All that, plus a tiny bit weird. We love Roy Cropper’s weirdness. Or at least we love it now.

When actor David Neilson began playing the character in 1995, Roy seemed weird in a rather more unsettling, almost Crimewatchy way, as we’re reminded at the start of this mini- tribute. “He came in to be quite menacing,” recalls Alison King, who plays Carla.

Illustrating this point are his earliest clips ( he was meant to be there for just six episodes), of a chap who seemed more creepy than cuddly. But as often happens on Corrie, a guest character reveals more potential and ends up sticking around.

In Roy’s case, of course, there was also the sweetest of romances on the horizon.

After an inauspicious start, he and Hayley went on to form one of soap’s loveliest, most unlikely relationships. They were “oddballs”, says David, who

“wouldn’t have been right for anyone else but each other”.

Elsewhere, in THE SECRET

LIFE OF THE ZOO ( C4, 8pm), Chester’s keepers are worried about Diego and Icana.

They’re giant otters ( Diego and Icana are, I mean, not the keepers) but so far they haven’t mated.

This is bad news, because giant otters are in short supply these days. Making baby ones is imperative. The decision, then, is to pack Diego off to live elsewhere, then bring in a new male otter who might offer more, er, vim.

This new arrival, from a zoo in the Czech Republic, is called Tarubu. But will Tarubu and Icana find true love? The keepers seem anxious. “These animals are more than capable of killing each other,” one of them remarks, which isn’t really what we want to hear.

Anyway, I shan’t spoil it for you by revealing whether or not it proves to be lust at first sight for this new otter pairing.

But if you’re a firm believer that TV channels should respect the watershed, you may want to start drafting your letter to Ofcom.

In other news, it looks as if the sloths may at last get it on.

Typically, though, they’re acting like it’s all too much effort.

It comes to us all.