Coronation Street (ITV, 9pm) **

LORRAINE Kelly. Scotland’s Snow White. The loveliest woman in the world, whose all-round yumminess could only be boosted by making a cameo appearance on Britain’s favourite soap on a Bank Holiday Monday.

How was she, you insist on asking? Now, no-one would be so unkind as to say Lolly is a bad actor. It is Lorraine, for heaven’s sake. See all previous compliments. But for the love of Betty’s hotpot, the last time I saw anything that wooden, Noah was guiding the animals on board, two by two.

Her “journey” to the soap, as thesps like to say, began some weeks back when a character fantasised about being Lorraine's daughter. “She’s dead pretty,” said Gemma, Chesney’s other half. “We’d have celebs round all the time.” Lorraine was reportedly tickled fuschia at the mention. Before you could say, “call her agent”, the guest appearance was sorted.

Picture the scene: the Platt-Tilsley-Rodwell family, all 7,325 of them, have gone on holiday to a forest park, or as Nick described the place, “a pokey lodge in the middle of nowhere”. The clan arrived, sans matriarch Gail, who had stopped off to buy a pint of milk in the park shop.

"Surgery ruining women's looks" says Lorraine

She arrived a few moments later, breathless, to spread the news that Lorraine Kelly was there on holiday, too. Son David was unimpressed. “Is this like the time you saw Leonardo DiCaprio buying a duvet at Argos?”

“Oh beggar Lorraine Kelly,” said Gail’s mother, Audrey, seemingly unaware that the taxman had already tried and failed. “Where’s the milk?”

Gail said that “in all the excitement” she had forgotten to buy any. Excitement: this from a woman once married to a serial killer who drove the family into a canal.

The writers milked the “Is it, or is it not, Lorraine” thing for all it was worth. Audrey insisted it couldn’t be. “Lorraine Kelly wouldn’t come somewhere like here. She’d be in Barbados having Mai Tais with Christopher Biggins.”

Gail was convinced, though. So convinced that on spying someone in a pedalo who looked like Lorraine, Gail, her daughter and granddaughter jumped in a boat and gave chase.

Now, long and bitter experience shows that the appearance of pedalos in any supposedly comic skit is never a good sign, but let us not be too hasty.

As it turned out, it was not Lorraine out there on the water. She was on the shore, bringing a cup of tea to some old bloke (not Piers Morgan).

“Those women are going to capsize if they’re not careful,” real Lorraine said to her companion. Her brow was furrowing furiously, her head shaking in amazement at the folly of it all. Completely over-reacting to the situation. If she had dialled her performance down a dozen notches it would still be turned up to 11.

Worse was to come, including a scene in which a distracted Gail shot Lorraine in the leg with an arrow. It was like the dot-dot-dot Morse code moment in the last episode of Line of Duty. That bad.

Lorraine wins tax battle

“You daft wee woman,” cried Lorraine in another doomed bid for a Bafta, “you could have killed me!” Not really, Lolly. Gail, like half of Coronation Street’s residents, has done time in jail. If she had really wanted to do you harm she could have fashioned a shiv out of Audrey’s specs.

Coronation Street is normally as good at comedy as EastEnders is spectacularly bad at it. Some of the funniest lines of the TV week can often be found within Corry’s scripts. This was thin stuff, though, cobblers that came across as something cobbled together at the last minute. As for Lolly, don’t give up the daytime presenting job just yet, love.