THERE are many perplexing things about Soapland.

But none more so than how impossibly fertile they all are.

In fact, on television in general pregnancies happen very easily, almost always unplanned in fact.

I wonder what the actual statistics are for women going into labour, for example, having had no idea they were expecting in the first place ?

Probably very low but I can immediately bring to mind two instances in Emmerdale and at least one in Eastenders during the past couple of decades.

Maybe the improbability of how easily everyone has babies has recently caught my eye because last week the BBC gave a large chunk of its radio time to focusing on Fertility Week.

So every day I listened to very sad, real life stories, of couples desperate to have a family with no success - but then happened to catch a trailer for Eastenders which reminded me Sharon Mitchell is expecting a baby. At 50.

This is part of a storyline about to reach its zenith - a tale of two babies, not just one.

The father of Sharon’s baby, you see, is also the father of her stepdaughter Louise’s unborn child.

Lucky old Keanu has no trouble in the baby production department - both mothers-to-be fell pregnant at almost the exact time as well.

Well, not exactly the same time but, handily, they are both due at Christmas.

I suggest everyone having a bit of trouble moves to Albert Square or the Dales.

No need to search for the “lucky chair” at work or spend thousands in fertility treatments.

I know this is fictional but the soaps like to pat themselves on the back long and hard about bringing issues affecting real people to the forefront yet I can’t recall any characters trying to get IVF and discovering they don’t live in the right postcode.

Nor has anyone gone through the adoption process, or ventured into the world of fostering, as far as I know.

And while the BBC did brilliantly spending a week highlighting the devastation not being able to get pregnant can bring, they could perhaps have launched it with someone other than Izzy Judd who presumably did not have to worry about whether or not she could afford the next round of treatment.

Only slightly less frustrating was watching the baby Albatross trying to get back on its nest in the first instalment of David Attenborough’s ambitious new Sunday night must watch.

No sooner had we got over that, this week there was footage of walrus throwing themselves off cliffs.

I recall seeing that before but it was still as powerful, as were the images of the Orangutan population and their plight thanks to the use of Palm oil.

Probably should watch less soaps and more nature documentaries but I literally had never heard of the blue-faced snow monkeys featured this week, or even seen one, and then in the opening episode of the much-lauded adaptation of Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials, screened soon after, there it was.

Well, I definitely thought Mrs Coulter’s Daemon was a dead ringer.

I have read the source books and am in a minority of folk who quite enjoyed the film adaptation of the first book but even after this first episode I still think it is quite a high brow concept for the young adult market it is aimed at.

Dust is still just the stuff which settles on my pictures.

But James McAvoy on his own is worth watching it for.