Quite the month it’s been down in the jolly old gold-paved streets of Walford.

Michael Moon’s met his maker. Jack’s jumped ship.

Dennis’s demonic transformation into Damien from The Omen is coming along nicely.

And Bianca’s back with a bald boyfriend and the last thing this soap needs - two more snotty-nosed brats.

As for any semblance of realism, you’re really looking in the wrong place. It’s EastEnders, for heaven sake.

No one batted an eyelid when the Queen Vic decided to hold a beauty contest for its smallest target market, teenagers, let alone when 36-year-old Kim Fox was allowed to enter.

Having discovered Danny was penniless and shacked up in an unrented bare bedsit, Lucy Beale didn’t think it odd that he opened his wallet and offered a bribe to buy her silence, presumably with Monopoly money.

We’re still no closer to anybody in Albert Square hearing of such a thing as an electronic bank transfer, standing order or direct debit, as everyone walks around with envelopes stuffed with wads of cash.

Lauren and Abi’s dad Max is in prison facing trial for tampering with car brakes and a 10-grand legal bill.

Yet, with the electricity company threatening to cut off their supply and loan sharks poised to seize the Brannings’ worldly possessions, not one of them thinks it might, just might, be a good idea to tell their oblivious off-screen mum Tanya exactly what the heck is going on.

And that was before their cousin Alice was wrongly thrown in the slammer for murdering Michael.

A morose Lauren said: “I just wish I could see an end in sight.”

Which makes two of us. No such luck though, I fear.

Not when the latest arrival from Manchester, Bi’s cabbie beau Tel – played by comedian Terry Alderton, last seen on BBC1 cross-dressing as Tina Turner and gurning like Popeye having a stroke, for Let’s Dance For Sport Relief – appears to have circumvented the requirements for acquiring a London hackney carriage licence.

Overnight he’s apparently gained the relevant medical certificates and CRB checks and memorised every nook and cranny of the capital’s labyrinth of highways to pass The Knowledge with flying colours.

But it’s Michael’s murder, sensitively broken by Carol to Joey in a shouting match, that’s really sent this show doolally.

And not just because the prosecution’s chief and only witness Janine has been allowed to visit Alice in jail, the girl she’s pinned the crime on.

A soap murder is always a ratings winner and it’s already given new executive producer Dominic Treadwell-Collins, who has the unenviable task of scraping this show from the gutter, a sorely-needed boost.

It doesn’t deserve it, however, for one simple reason.

This is the storyline – woman strikes baddie with a weapon and is charged with murder despite the fact she didn’t deliver the fatal blow, someone else did moments later.

Sound familiar? It’s a carbon copy of Emmerdale’s 40th anniversary live episode killing.

Simply replace BBC1’s Michael, Alice and Janine with ITV’s Carl, Chas and Cameron.

You see EastEnders is not only miserable and fanciful, it’s now lazily copying the soap that’s overtaken it creatively and ratings-wise.

Perhaps, then, AJ Ahmed was on to something when suggesting a radical course of action to avoid telling Dot the charity football team had lost the £4,000 (cash in an envelope, of course) for her church roof appeal.

“There is another option. We all move to Pakistan and live out the rest of our days there.”

Take that idea to the next production meeting, will you?

Never know. The cast and crew might go for it.