I NOTICED recently that the BBC rest their lunchtime soap opera Doctors over the summer.

It disappears around Wimbledon time and then just re-appears in September when they kids have gone back to school - refreshed and ready to start doing all those house calls no-one ever gets in real life.

And it has got me thinking this would be a good idea for the rest of them too.

A little rest over the summer or Christmas period - when let's face it nothing upbeat ever happens on the cobbles, the Square or in the Dales.

Nothing. People have puddings thrown over them, get blown up and are generally vile to one another.

Oh, tell a lie, babies are born at Christmas time on soaps. And that is obviously very jolly.

But also tends to involve a lot of screaming and levels of peril that make it acceptable for it to be played out on prime time TV over the festive season.

It is enough to turn you off your sprouts and the summer is no better.

This is a time we might even be feeling optimistic about life so it is great time to maybe have a rest.

The BBC must disagree because it even laid on an extra doom-laden one-off special of its flagship Saturday night serial drama Casualty recently.

So I am advocating all of the major soaps having a rest over the six-week period, at least while the kids are off.

Most people are busy and are having to play catch-up anyway once they are back from their holidays.

Let the good folk of Albert Square and Coronation Street have a break of their own.

People rarely go on an actual family holiday in these shows anyway - just as none of them work outside their postcode or drive cars unless it is part of the plot and they happen to be knocking another character over.

Let's all have a break from the relentless raking over of the same storylines too.

It might give the writers a chance to catch up and come up with a few more lines of enquiry.

And for them to gather up all the old faces that seem to drift back to their former stomping grounds.

I notice Dean Gaffney has returned to his original role as Robbie Jackson - now running the market don't you know - and rather annoyingly not looking much older than when he left more than decade ago.

Maybe he needed a break from the doom and gloom - and obviously to head to the jungle to eat bugs and discover himself.

It is where a lot of soap stars end up.