BETH: I'm the butch one. I've got a glass of beer and everything.
MARGARET: Surely butch / femme is very 1920s Radclyffe Hall darling?
BETH: Well, you're only partly right, as although to an extent the demarcation has become far less de rigeur, these traditional roles have, in a turnaround from their almost wholesale rejection on the lesbian / feminist (indeed what is the extent of the distinction between the two?) political scene of the 1970s, nonetheless seen a recent resurgence in lesbian cultu- (slight pause) Wait, this photo is from about 1994, so we'd better stick to looking pretty and kissing briefly.

Ladies and gents, I introduce my occasional series on Dead TV Lesbians and I thought it best to start at the very top, with the grand, er, mamma of them all, Beth Jordache, whose suicide scenes were reshot with a different actress to Anna Friel, lying under a sheet whilst family members said hastily rewritten lines re a pre-existing but undiagnosed heart condition (because prisoners' welfare groups got wind of the fact Beth was due to top herself and implored Mersey TV to change the storyline as the incarcerated fatherstabbing (though to be fair, he asked for it) top TV lesbo Beth was someone many women prisoners identified with).

Beth Jordache. Ah yes. Now I am not saying that Channel 4 TURNED ME GAY, or anything, but in my formative years, I was able to rely on the channel to serve up a regular helping of lesbian programming. For a while in the 1990s they even had a Saturday night regular feature called "Dyke TV", which I think lasted until they had showcased all the decent lesbian independent films at the regular time of 2am (i.e. it ran to three Saturday evenings).

But yes Beth. Ah. I can remember being utterly, morbidly (I describe the fascination as morbid as the Jordache storyline was so unrelentingly horrible: mum and kids who have been beaten up and raped by abusive father escape to safety and then he finds them and the mother stupidly and annoyingly lets him in the house again, and repeat) fascinated by the whole Jordache story, and I became even more so once Beth started lezzing up wi... er, I mean, exploring her sexuality. I can remember very clearly that the scene that replaced the infamous lesbian kiss in the Saturday teatime omnibus was an extra shot of Mick the chef sort of bloke playing pool in a pub with one of his friends [insert bit about pool cues and phallic symbols and the patriarchy and all that jazz] and being slightly miffed that they had cut it out, and then wondering why I was bothered, and then having a sneaking suspicion that I knew the answer to THAT one already.

Beth Jordache, Dead TV Lesbian #1, committer (is that a word?) of patricide and continuing gay girl icon, we salute you and your questionable taste in earrings, your silly death, your failure to hide the body of your dead father properly and the fact that you were not played by an actress who was actually a lesbian.

Finally worked out how to log back in here again. Whoop!

I noticed having watched all of the first and second series episodes now that the aforementioned Cissy from "You Rang M'Lord?" gets to kiss her girlfriend full on the lips on primetime BBC1 "family" sitcom viewing in 1990, i.e. some three or four years prior to "Brookside." But then, no-one actually says the word "lesbian", so perhaps that's how they get away with it.

Damn, I have got the word "lesbian" in my blog title! It's such a giveaway.