I GREATLY sympathise with Emma Brook, and her anger and disgust at the current storyline in EastEnders. I have followed this series since the beginning but nowadays find nothing but doom and gloom, so disagree with Emma that it can ever be termed a "light-hearted soap".

Ethel is one of the "old" characters and as far as I can remember, played a sympathetic role - one of the few, I might add. I feel that this is one occasion when the soap is portraying a true-to-life situation with at least a modicum of sensitivity, which does not apply to the vast majority of the scenes.

A nastier bunch of characters can hardly be imagined - the men are violent, lawless and insensitive; the women, with the possible exception of Laura, Ian Beale's long-suffering nanny, are promiscuous, loud-mouthed and aggressively feminist. How characters like the man-eating Mel, to say nothing of the particularly unsavoury Janine have not been strangled by the men in their lives long ago, really beats me!

I find myself held in dreadful fascination, but, in spite of my husband's derision, find it hard to switch off, much as I feel tempted to at times!

However, it seems that the more "real-life" the storyline nowadays, the better.

We have to remember that the vast majority of TV is not apparently put on for our entertainment, more to confront us with life at its most depressing and characters at their most foul, heaven knows why!

The programmes which brought enjoyment, laughter and appreciation have long since died a death, more's the pity. Do other readers agree?

Heather Causnett,

Escrick Park Gardens,

Escrick,

York.

...I AM not a soap-opera addict but, on what I've watched, I think the BBC have tackled a very sensitive subject in a responsible and acceptable way.

Sadly, Emma Brook's father died, relatively young, with cancer of the oesophagus - a particularly awful type of the disease.

But there are numerous kinds of cancer and each individual case is different.

Many people die with a minimum of discomfort and distress due to present-day medication and expert care services.

Television soaps exaggerate real life - if they didn't viewers would find them too dull. But I haven't seen anything 'insulting', 'disgusting', or 'sick' in the way EastEnders has portrayed an elderly character with terminal cancer.

Colin S Jeffrey,

East Mount Road,

York.