Vera Duckworth - and now, the end is near...

There's only one Coronation Street story in the press this morning, and of course it's the death of Vera Duckworth. The level of interest is incredibly high, which proves that Vera is more than just a soap character - she's part of our everyday life. Even people who don't watch Corrie know who Vera Duckworth is.

"It's the moment all Corrie fans have been dreading," says the Daily Star, with a photograph of Jack Duckworth watching undertakers taking away the body of his beloved Vee. The scenes were filmed several weeks ago, and the Star quotes Bill Tarmey as saying, "She only left a few weeks ago but already I miss walking on set and seeing her there. I miss working with her – we all do.”

Jane Simon in The Mirror points out that, "Many Corrie fans have grown up never knowing a world that didn't have Vera Duckworth in it. For almost 34 years she's been a national treasure - a noisy, nagging, hilarious national treasure. She might not really be related to the Queen, but she's 100 per cent soap royalty." She's going a bit over the top when she adds, "How on earth will Jack - and the country - manage without her?"

Elsewhere in The Mirror, Kevin Kennedy (Curly Watts) has written a moving tribute to Liz Dawn. "I lived in six different places in Coronation Street but living with Jack and Vera was my favourite," he says. "There was a magical chemistry at work between Bill and Liz and then with me when I joined them. We had a lot of fun taking the mickey out of each other and that came across on screen." He reveals that he was asked to come back to the Street to film scenes following Vera's death: "Coronation Street asked me to come back for a short period, but I didn't know what it was for except it was to do with Vera. I was right in the middle of rehearsals for Chitty Chitty Bang Bang so I couldn't get there. I would have loved to have been a part of that, though."

And one of the best TV critics, Jim Shelley of The Mirror, sums up Vera's impact. "For 33 years, she has also been half of probably the most popular couple in soap - right up there with Stan and Hilda Ogden, Den and Angie Watts, and Bobby and Sheila Grant. Her status as a true icon (the perm, the clothes, the accessories) is confirmed by the fact that even people who've never watched Corrie know Jack and Vee and what they stand for. Loud and colourful as she may have been - in 3,011 episodes - she was rarely less than totally believable."

Shelley goes on to say, "She was part of the firmament, the day-to-day life that makes Coronation Street such an important part of British culture and one of the best shows on television. Characters like Vera are becoming rarer and rarer, replaced by more and more shiny, smiley kids in a cynical ploy to attract younger viewers. I can't help fearing that with her passing, we have all lost something."