Reality check

I'd hoped for better. BBC Content finance boss Richard Dawkins comes new to the world of luvvies and has been hornswoggled by set designers at EastEnders.

He appeared before the Public Accounts Committee yesterday, defending the overspending on a new outdoor set for the tired soap. What the audience is seeing now is old facades (which admittedly should have been replaced in the last century). What is being proposed is something that looks  a) at least identical at a distance to these old fake sets b) and even more realistically like an authentic East End square when you get closer.

The set designers have been known to stick extra leaves on trees in spring filming, as the show is recorded six weeks ahead of transmission. They took more than a fortnight to decide on real bricks; there have been more meetings about real mortar (who knows how long it will take to agree on pointing style ? Will they be using a bastard tuck ?); the contract to build has elements of 'artisan' work; and then there is a long post-construction process of something called "scenic ageing."

Look, Richard, it's a soap. It's not real.  Build a new set of 'flats'.  Or insist on a plotline which takes out one side of the square at a time for redevelopment into two bed-room flats.  Make the construction noise part of your contribution to an accurate portrayal of modern capital city life.

Or tell us how many of the EastEnders weekly audience (said to be 9m) can tell the difference between Victorian and Edwardian mortar.