Yorkshire soap Emmerdale picks up a coveted gong at the British Soap Awards on TV tonight. But, despite its soaring ratings, it is too often overlooked at awards time. Stephen Lewis reports.

IT'S all happening up in Emmerdale.

Fourteen-year-old Debbie is about to become a teenage mum. Robert, who is engaged to Katie, who was married to Robert's brother Andy, has been sleeping with Sadie, resident bitch and wife of local landowner Jimmy.

Even mild-mannered vet Paddy has been letting his animal passions get the better of him, indulging in a bit of rumpy-pumpy with Viv, his wife Emily's boss. Sadly for Paddy, Emily's found out all about it.

There is more unbridled lust, heaving bosoms and raunchy goings-on in this one small corner of Yorkshire than you would find at a wife-swapping convention. It must be all that fresh North Yorkshire air. Whoever said Yorkshiremen are dour and dull?

It's been a great year for Emmerdale. It has been regularly winning eight or nine million viewers a night, trouncing an ailing EastEnders and even giving that queen of soaps Coronation Street a run for its money.

An average of 9.8 million people watched on Tuesday, January 4, when Charity and Tom's wedding turned into a nightmare, Tom telling the packed congregation his bride-to-be had been carrying on behind his back and he couldn't wed her.

The icing on the cake comes tonight, when Emmerdale picks up a gong in the British Soap Awards. The Tom and Charity wedding-day-from-hell special swung it, earning Emmerdale the Best Single Episode award.

Emmerdale bosses must be pleased, right?

Wrong. Producers of the great Yorkshire soap are thrilled to have won something, but there is still a sense that Emmerdale is unfairly passed over in favour of Corrie and EastEnders when it comes to the top prizes.

Corrie sweeps the board tonight with eight gongs, including the all-important Best Soap. But even EastEnders - generally thought to have lost its way - wins five awards to Emmerdale's one.

"We are thrilled to have picked up the award for best single episode because it acknowledges the hard work that goes into the show," an Emmerdale spokesperson said, before adding through gritted teeth: "The overall results are a little disappointing and do not reflect what a strong year it has been for Emmerdale."

Diehard Emmerdale fan Robert Beaumont, freelance journalist and writer, agrees.

"It's a disgrace," he said. "It has been their best-ever year and I'm astounded that it has not won more awards."

Robert, a former chief feature writer with the Evening Press, has been a fan of the soap since the mid-1980s, when it was still Emmerdale Farm.

So why does he like it?

"There are plenty of blondes," he said. "Being a chap who likes blondes that is rather splendid." There is also the beautiful Yorkshire landscape, which as a Yorkshireman he appreciates. But what seals it for Robert is the way the soap combines steamy drama with deft comedy.

There are some great tragi-comic characters, he says - you only have to look at the ongoing storyline involving Paddy and Viv, characters so hopelessly unsuited for each other their steamy clinch was the kind of thing you could only watch from behind spread fingers.

Robert also admires the way the soap manages to avoid, sometimes only just, the kind of unbelievable storylines that made Dallas a laughing stock. It may sometimes steer close to the wind, Robert admits, but most of the time it retains at least a grain of plausibility, even if the folk of this one small village do get up to a lot more than they have any right to.

And finally, there is the acting.

It is, Robert says seriously, a "lot better than Crossroads."

So why is it ignored when it comes to awards?

Robert thinks it may be a bit of southern snobbery towards popular home-produced Yorkshire shows such as Emmerdale, Heartbeat and The Royal.

Ben Halligan, a lecturer in film and television at York St John College, agrees there may be some snobbery involved. Emmerdale is great at what it does, he says, which is recounting all the little victories and spiteful pettiness of life. As with all great soaps, the characters become so familiar they are almost a part of your own life. Also it is aspirational.

"Where would you like to live, in the world of Emmerdale or the world of EastEnders?" said Ben.

This sense of comfort is perhaps where Emmerdale comes unstuck at awards time, Ben believes.

Whereas EastEnders deals with gritty topics - Aids, race relations - Emmerdale settles for being fun and familiar. "It is TV as wallpaper, the kind of thing you like having on while you do the ironing."

He has words of comfort for the Emmerdale producers, however. The wrong people usually receive awards - just look at the Oscars and the fact Martin Scorsese has never won one.

So Emmerdale is in good company. And as long as the show's producers don't have to worry about introducing grittier storylines with half an eye on the awards, the show will be able to go on doing what it does best - keeping us all entertained.

Updated: 11:21 Wednesday, May 11, 2005