Sunday, 7.25 p.m. Naas RFC. Raucous chatter, glasses clinking, the odd bar of a song. Suddenly, a deathly hush. The verdict is in. It's the worst. Deirdre's going down. 18 months. And Naas says . . .? An unmerciful cheer. But then, whoever suggested that rugby louts were sensitive souls?

Elsewhere, entire nations are plunged into mourning. After all, how much can one woman take? Only 43, and already dumped on by two husbands and widowed by a third. And that's not all.

There was the broken engagement, a draining extramarital affair, a truly cretinous child, a bubble perm, glasses big enough to glaze Liberty Hall, a gangster's moll for a best friend, neck veins worthy of an Oscar, all wedded to the common sense of a newt.

Frankly, the only wonder is that she's managed to stay out of jail for so long. Her hair is tamer now but even that may have been a ghastly mistake. Why else would her barrister have opened his closing speech with the words: "Her life has been nondescript, ordinary, not the stuff of dreams. . ."

This pill clearly never knew Sexy Specs in her bubble perm days. And where did he think he was going in a purple shirt anyway? The jury had enough to be confused about surely, without taking her brief for a crook. Nondescript, indeed. For his fat £10,000 fee, you'd expect a bit of basic homework.

Deirdre married Ken Barlow the same week Lady Diana married Prince Charles. Guess who got the bigger audience, Purple Shirt? Twenty-nine million bug-eyed viewers stayed in to see if she was going to dump Ken for Mike Baldwin (who used to be married to Ken's daughter, by the way). Manchester United flashed her decision on the notice board at half time: Deirdre Stays With Ken.

Call that nondescript - hmmph?

Her solicitor was hard put to find even one friend of hers nondescript enough to serve as a character witness. Indeed, such is her obscure allure that Ken and Mike were still trying to mangle each other outside the court last Sunday.

Mike, a knickers king, embezzled company money to pay her legal fees. Ken, the male escort, made the front of the Weatherfield Gazette when a client expired in the loo. Her last husband was a Moroccan half her age, who met a mysterious end, whose kidney lives on in cretinous Tracey, who was fathered by Deirdre's first husband, Ray. Who is gay, by the way. (Nondescript? Where has Purple Shirt been living?)

Then, the very notion that all of them would fall for the oldest line in the book. . . that old for-she-did-tempt-me-and-I-did-eat-of-the-apple trick. Do these people live in the real world at all?

Let them take a leaf out of the Sun. That proud organ hit the "Free the Weatherfield One" trail from minute one. T-shirts, car stickers, banners, petitions, pages and pages of coverage.

In fact, when it ran the headline "Ol' Sparky Kills Gran" above a short page 2 report on Tuesday, we feared that the smartass Weatherfield cop had finally done for her and sent her to the electric chair. (With a name like Rachid, it's a wonder he didn't do her for the Lockerbie bombing as well). But it wasn't Deirdre, thankfully. Just someone in Florida.

Though it could have been, you know. The law's an ass and no mistake. "I reckon Deirdre got the same poxy judge as me," said Ronnie Knight, with the clear-eyed vision of a man banged up for seven years for receiving in a £6 million robbery.

"Mad" Frankie Fraser, in for 41 years, also felt her pain. "It's no place for the likes of her", he said, "thank God the Sun's sticking up for her. . ." Krays henchman Tony Lambrianou was also very upset, worryingly so (15 years for the murder of Jack "The Hat" McVitie): "Deirdre's been fitted up by that slime of a boyfriend . .."

But "Florida" Phil Wells (no relation of the Florida gran), in for a £1 million heist, showed admirable realism: "I can't see her getting out in a hurry. That's not how it works."

With support of that calibre, it could only be downhill from there. A backbench British Labour MP, Fraser Kemp, voiced the concern of 20 million ordinary citizens when he demanded that the Home Secretary intervene to secure her immediate release.

Mr Jack Straw has so far failed to respond, taking the sniffy view, no doubt, that her early release would be a matter for the courts to decide. But in a move bound to split the government, the people's Prime Minister, Tony Blair, declared that it was clear to anyone with eyes in their head that she was innocent and should be free. To prove his devotion, he had a spokesman wave aloft a photograph signed for him by the denizens of Coronation Street. (Honestly).

In another development, the Conservative leader upended the party's long tradition of bang 'em up and hang 'em high. He said straight out that the whole nation was alarmed by the case, "Conservatives as much as everyone else".

Meanwhile - as Jon Lindsay, the most hated man in Britain, skulked in Spain - Free Deirdre graffiti appeared on Manchester walls, half-page articles littered the Daily Tele- graph, vox pops were aired on Irish radio, pickets were mounted outside Granada Television and gifts poured in for Deirdre, including a champagne weekend.

Though given her abrasive effect on her cellmate (in for GBH), she'll hardly live to drink it. As always, there are the Doubting Thomases.

Apart from the usual "Lock `em up and lose the key" Blimps, there's the "look, she's only a character in a soap opera" brigade, the "hope she rots in jail - she was always a moaning minnie" splinter, the "forget fraud: her only crime is overacting" faction, and the "listen, this isn't funny, there are real people in real trouble to worry about" campaigners.

Some of these characters have gone so far as to organise a "let Rachid rot" rally among other tasteless spectacles (though they'll never be as big or sexy as Deirdre's). Well, does the Express have news for them. Jon the swine has already pulled a similar stunt on a creature called Mary Docherty. And the really horr... eh, great news is that Mary will have Deirdre back in t'Rovers in jigtime. But that's after Alma dumps Mike and. . .