It’s just a pity someone collared the name first because the Rovers Return could be the leitmotif for the country’s second longest-running TV soap. Characters depart EastEnders and then reappear, years later sometimes, with entirely new heads thanks to the triumph of Walford medical science. Then do it again and again.

A cynic might say the comebacks occur when either the scriptwriters have run out of plotlines or the actors, who set out chasing that Hollywood role, stage or music opportunity, realise that their bread, thick white sliced, is better buttered in Albert Square.

Some, of course, never reappear because, that cynic again, their ratings or focus group visibility doesn’t cut it.

With 132 deaths in the place since the launch in 1985, the Square is surely the most hazardous place on Earth, more dangerous than Chicago in the thirties or Caracas today. There have been stabbings, shootings, explosions, enforced plummets from high buildings, suicides, stranglings, squashings by lorry and car – this is a recurrent one – as well as natural causes like cancer, electrocution, speedboat accidents and heart attacks.

But spare a thought for the novel ending of the poor sisters Roxy and Ronnie, the former dying of a heart attack in a pool and her sis drowning after she dived in to rescue her then her wedding dress pulled her down.

What next? Well, Dot Cotton has disappeared from the Square, but will she be back? Not according to 93-year-old actor June Brown, who says her departure is “for good”. So, another demise could be on the horizon – and it might be a chance for writers to dream up something new. I’m putting my money on, not lung cancer, but that she’s the first British-based victim of coronavirus, the cast in faces masks, her absence from the screen of late down to that quarantine period.

Looking at the hatches, matches and dispatches, there have been more deaths than either marriages or births, so in another 35 years it’s possible that the last EastEnder croaks dramatically. I’m hoping it’s Ian Beale.

The latest marriage – there have been 67 of them – was between Keegan Baker and Tiffany Butcher. Tiffany is Ricky’s daughter, possibly. Ricky is one who left, returned and left again. He was last spotted on Celebrity MasterChef, but fortunately none of the other contestants died.

There has been a same-sex marriage. And Ian Beale, him again, has married almost all the female cast – five at the last count. Coming up on the rails, however, is Phil Mitchell with four, and if the latest, Sharon, isn’t careful she may end up in a rain butt behind the Queen Vic pub.

It’s the third one for Shaz. She used to be married to Phil’s brother, Grant – are you keeping up? – who has left Walford to try to understand and make a crust from violent criminals the world over. He might have started by looking at his own brother.

Phil has come and gone so often through the revolving door of the Square that it has all become a blur. Perhaps he makes himself scarce to evade those out to kill him. He’s been shot twice, beaten, run over and had so many near-death incidents – more than a dozen – he must be the luckiest man in Walford. The latest teaser has him possibly drown as a party boat on the Thames goes down and the man he thought he’d murdered is intent on revenge.

He won’t die, of course, unless he has a fat contract for another gig in his pocket and it pulls him down. Even so, he’ll be back in a year or so – depend on it. Remember, Dirty Den quite literally came back from the dead after meeting his destiny with the wrong end of a bullet, biding his time in a watery grave for 20 years before surprising daughter Sharon with his ressurection – so anyone can return.

Phil has a son called Ben, who used to be a nice boy but now he’s a psycho. Well, it’s in the DNA, or large capitals in the script. Ben sets the record for head transplants – he’s now on his sixth one.

You can understand that people change as they grow up but Ben is totally transformed, his eyesight has even been cured by his new bonce as he no longer needs those bottle-top specs, and he’s better looking too. Some nutters have all the luck.

Peter Beale, too, is on his sixth incarnation, but this is nothing compared to Sam Mitchell, who had the transplant and then returned in her original head, which must have been kept in a bubbling glass jar for years, although it could have done with a brain transplant. Nevertheless it was a medical miracle.

You can’t watch an episode now without threats, screams, duplicity, personality disorders, garrottings perhaps, as well, of course, as shape-shifting.

It never used to be like this in the old days when the high point of an episode of Corrie was Ena Sharples, Minnie Caldwell and Martha Longhurst gossiping in the snug of the Rovers over milk stouts served by Bet Lynch. Although poor Martha went toes up on a divan of a heart attack in a dastardly plot departure.

Corrie was the first soap to look at working-class life, although it was, and is, a caricature. Prior to this on radio there was Mrs Dale’s Diary, which I think was about a doctor’s wife although it could just as well have been about a blowsy dipsomaniac duchess, and The Archers, which is credited with the first soap death when Grace Archer rushed into a burning stable to rescue a horse and was immolated.

This was in September 1955 and it was a devious ploy to divert attention from the launch of ITV. It so shocked the nation – we were very shockable then – that the BBC switchboard was jammed for 48 hours and Auntie had to plead with people to stop sending wreaths.

This was parodied gloriously in an old episode of Hancock’s Half Hour called The Bowmans. Hancock plays a bumpkin called Joshua Merriweather who is so unpleasant to the other cast that the character is killed off, only for the BBC to discover the audience loves him, so he is resurrected as his twin brother Ben (shades of Walford) on handsome new wages, and as his revenge he has half the village falling down a disused mine shaft.

It hasn’t happened yet in Albert Square but it’s only 35 years in so there’s plenty of time for this and other novel catastrophes. And also for the characters to regenerate like Doctor Who, but, wait a minute …!