A third series of The Street is on the way, and I can reveal one of the storylines.
A man is walking down the street and sees a house on fire with a child crying for help from one of the upstairs rooms.
He forces his way into the house, manages to save the kid, then battles the flames to get out again where he spots a friend, thrusts the child into his arms and says
"you saved him. I'm on invalidity."
It's a cracking storyline, and I can't wait to see it on screen.
But isn't going to change anyone's perception about the north.
I was at a talk Jimmy McGovern and two of his Street writers (Arthur Ellison and Alice Nutter) gave at FACT last week.
It was a BAFTA-organised event where veteran screenwriter Laurence Marks quizzed them on the programme and the process of writing it, and mostly it was a fascinating 90-minutes.
But at one point Marks, who lives in the south east, asked McGovern why he hadn't set The Street in Liverpool.
The answer was it was all the fault of the Echo.
Apparently, whenever Jimmy sets anything in the city, the Echo's letters' pages are full of people "lambasting" him and complaining that he's perpetuating the stereotype of the work-shy, thieving or otherwise degenerate Scouser.
Thus, according to the writer, he is stopped from doing what he would like by the paper.
Now, no one would ever accuse me of being a slavish supporter of my employer.
But I have to admit, I found this damning of the Echo (in an event which was being filmed by BAFTA by the way, so it could be seen by all sorts of people outside Liverpool who will believe it) to be rather irritating.
If it is the case that he receives such approbation then it is not at the hands of the Echo, but at the hands of the people of Liverpool.
The media may be powerful, but it can't yet - and should never be in the position to - force people to put pen to paper in that way.
