Can she make it through December?

Sally Webster of Coronation Street has never been material for a true soap matriarch, and she is shaping up to have a truly miserable Christmas alone in soap-land. And let's face it, Christmas alone in the land of suds is far more desolate than it would be in real life. So while all around her are luxuriating in the warmth of family and friends and Judy Mallett produces one baby after another, Sally will be ruefully facing up to the fact that she's made a right pig's ear of the year, and has no one to blame for it but herself.

This time last year she and ferret-faced estranged husband Kev were having a reconciliation of sorts after his dalliance with Natalie - now there's a real soap matriarch (and even more so after this Christmas sees her at the helm in t'Rovers). But even Sally doesn't deserve to be bored into an early grave by Kev, the man who has problems pronouncing the names of his own children properly - Ros-eh and So-feh. So it'll probably be D.I.V.O.R.C.E. before long. She should have stuck with the dishy Chris - good looking, nice pers, a few brain cells, he adored her, and good with his hands (mechanics are like that). But no, she had to ditch him (he went on to launch some sort of music recording career), and later, showing that she was a New Fool At An Old Game, fell for the equally handsome but dastardly Greg. Crazy.

Now she's taken refuge with Rita, who comments to Alec, "He conned her, cheated her, robbed her and hit her." "He knocked 'er about?" says Alec. "Now don't you go spreading that about," warns Rita, "she's the talk of the chip-shop already."

So Christmas Day sees Sally, with her Achy Breaky Heart, bumming a bed from Rita, wondering If We Can Make It Through December. Meanwhile the girls spend Christmas in the former marital home with Kev, with only a short, traumatic visit from their mother, who won't even get to see them opening their presents. She allowed wide boy Greg Kelly - hardly a Standing By My Woman Man - to bamboozle her out of her money for their ill-fated business venture, and moved out of her home for his doubtful charms and into his dingy flat with her two children. She put up with his insults, mean-spiritedness and then violence, until she cracked and said It's Quittin' Time.

Now, Sally is no mastermind, but she was never stupid. How could she not have seen his Cheatin' Heart, and the words "creep" and "bounder" writ large when he came along, clearly A Heartache Looking For A Place To Happen. He had pound signs in his eyes and fingers itching for her inheritance from her mother (who also died this year - 1998 was a bit of a bummer all round). He can hardly have been good enough in bed to compensate for his dreary personality, and she ignored all the signs, no matter how obvious - War Is Hell On The Home Front Too. Naturally, the Faded Love makes for some reasonably good scenes for actor Sally Whittaker, who up to now had to make do with lines like "Your pie and chips are ready, Are Kev" and "That's another 4,000 knickers I've stitched this month". These days it's more like I Fall To Pieces, or I've Cried The Blue Right Out of My Eyes.

She clearly had it coming (her come-uppance, not the violence), and Kev shouldn't be holier-thanthou about it all, but can we feel a bit of pity for poor, miserable Sal, trying to sell off her excess knickers in a rainy market so the boxes of undies aren't cluttering up Rita's unlikely love nest with the bould Alec? Nah, a bit of sympathy might only encourage her; this way we've a bit more misery and rowing to liven things up. Greg is still there as a menacing presence, and there's a bit of plotting and twisting left yet in the doomed relationship - and though he's a drinker it'll hardly ever be a case of She's Acting Single And I'm Drinking Doubles.

And whatever you say about her, Sally Webster is best when she's down and wondering Who Can I Count On? When her life has been happiest, it has also been most dull, and she can rise to the challenge beautifully: this is the woman who broke into the house where Are Kev was shacked up with Natalie, tuned the bath-taps on and left the house to flood. Revenge is sweet. And she's well capable of doing more than stitching knickers - she ran the factory office at one stage. The hormones enlivened by Greg seemed to have temporarily blunted her common sense.

Anyway, if Sally is feeling lonely this yuletide, Sleeping Single in a Double Bed, she could always bunk down around the corner with Deirdre Rachid, nee Barlow, nee whatever, like just about every other lost soul in Coronation Street (well, ex-jailbird Margi Clarke and her bold boy, at least). Or she could nip over to Liverpool to Brookside Close and move in with the Irish family the Musgroves, who are squatting with Sinbad, and who, every time you turn your back seem to have sprouted a few extra members.

It'll be a cold and lonely Christmas for Sally, because soap-land is notoriously unforgiving. Sally Webster has transgressed a fundamental law of soap nature by putting her own gratification before her duty. The added sin was that it was misguided passion, blinded by the sneer on Greg Kelly's lips and mobile phone in his pocket (or was he just glad to see her?). So by Sud's Law she must be punished for her selfishness and lack of judgment.

Interestingly, Kevin, who arguably behaved much worse, in terms of a longer deception, and in initially refusing her access to their children (where she had been reasonable in similar circumstances), was not punished half as much. Sometimes It's Hard To Be A Woman. That'll teach you to Stand By Your Man when he's a heel, Sal.