Why is my beloved Corrie copying EastEnders? asks the television presenter

Since I was a girl in the late 1960s, I’ve enjoyed watching Coronation Street and I still tune in every week. But the soap has lost the plot in recent months. For whatever reason, the producers of the ITV show, set among the back streets of Salford, seem to have decided to chase the EastEnders audience… so they’ve ramped up the sensationalism and we’ve had all manner of outrageous, hard-to-believe plots.

I don’t, for instance, like how they’re handling the current Pat Phelan storyline, which is dragging on and keeps losing momentum. Very frustrating. He’s a thoroughly nasty piece of work, and yes, every soap needs a villain, but he’s been responsible for the deaths of three people, including Luke Britton – no relation, by the way! It’s all a bit too much, and if he carries on this way, Corrie is in danger of becoming a Lancashire version of Scandi crime drama The Killing. It had better be a good climax.

On top of that, over Christmas Peter Barlow nearly killed wayward vicar Billy Mayhew. Yes, Billy killed Peter’s twin sister in a hit-andrun in 2001, but I just don’t believe that Peter would put Billy in a car boot on a cliff edge.

The drama has also been exploring bipolar disorder through Sally Metcalfe’s sister Gina, but it’s very heavy-handed and EastEnders has already covered this. Then there’s the whole surrogate baby storyline with Toyah Battersby, which quickly struck me as going nowhere.

Chasing the ratings like this is a mistake and runs the risk of turning Corrie into a pale shadow of EastEnders and alienating loyal fans like me. The two soaps have always been chalk and cheese and they should stay that way. Let’s not forget, the BBC created EastEnders in 1985 as a London-based rival to Granada’s soap with its millions of viewers. It followed where Corrie led, and I’m not sure that’s still the case.

Corrie’s great strength has always lain in its believable human relationships, its humour and its reflection of life as it is for many people. It’s got a very different flavour to any other soap. It doesn’t need to copy anything and its cast is talented enough to more than hold its own.

So if I got the chance to sit down with Corrie’s scriptwriters, I’d give them both barrels and tell them to forget about EastEnders, give us more of the characters with that heart we love, like Mary Taylor, Roy Cropper and Ken Barlow, and – most importantly – stay true to the spirit of the old, successful show.

Fern Britton’s new novel, Coming Home (HarperCollins, £12.99), is out now.