Published at 15:53, Wednesday, 09 April 2008

OUR own Whitehaven News cartoonist Trevor Green is the star of an exhibition that has just opened in Penrith.ANYONE who watches the TV soaps knows there is no such thing as a straightforward wedding.

GREEN’S PLEASANT LAND: Artist Trevor Green’s view of La’al Ratty

The exhibition, “Cumbria Life illustrations plus Recent Work” runs until May 11 at the Upfront Gallery, Hutton-in-the-Forest near Penrith.

Trevor said: “It all began eight years ago. Malcolm Bobbitt, the motoring author, had commissioned me to paint “portraits” of two classic cars which he owned at the time. This led to an article by Richard Simpson in the June 2000 issue of Cumbria Life magazine. And this in turn led to an invitation by Keith Richardson, the then editor, to begin a series featuring Cumbrian towns. So began my association with writer Christian Dymond, beginning with my home town of Cockermouth in the August 2000 issue.

“Thirty-five towns later – some having been visited more than once, plus Cumbrian valleys – the articles continue. Sue Allan took over from Christian in January of last year and Richard Eccles recently took over the editorship from Keith.

“Although there is a modicum of forward planning we prefer the spontaneous approach; one of the pleasures of our visits is simply recording in words and pictures what happens to catch our eye on the day. A casual conversation with someone on the street can suddenly become the central theme, reminding us that, whomever we meet, they’ve invariably got a good story to tell. Serendipity rules OK!”

The exhibition represents a small selection of the 200-plus watercolours produced for Cumbria Life, either mounted and framed or mounted, contained in polyester pockets and displayed in the browser. Also included is a small display of recent other work.

Look at our own soap star Roxanne Pallet (who plays Jo in Emmerdale). She ended up marrying Andy Sugden in a prison – and barely a few weeks later, found that she’d married the domestic abuser from hell!

And look at the Tom King in Emmerdale, who got murdered on his wedding night, having previously ditched his fiancée Charity at the altar.

Now specialist insurer Ecclesiastical has got in on the act by publishing a report on the state of matrimony in the nation’s leading television dramas It reveals a divorce rate roughly four times the national average; a one-in-five chance of being jilted at the altar or having your spouse die; and a one-in-eight chance of having to interrupt your Christmas holiday to walk up the aisle.

The figures have been drawn from the last five years of TV dramas Coronation Street, EastEnders and Emmerdale by church and wedding insurer Ecclesiastical Insurance.

It mounted its study of soap weddings to understand how the depiction of marriage in TV dramas differs from real life. The details of every marriage ceremony between 2003 and the present in each of Britain’s three most-watched soap operas were recorded and analysed.

Key findings from the study, Divorced from Reality?, were:

Between January 2003 and April 2008, there were 48 marriage ceremonies in the three soaps.

Eleven of the marriages (23%) were called off by either the bride or groom during the wedding ceremony itself.

36 weddings were completed successfully.

Only 11 (30%) of those 36 marriages remain intact today.

39% have ended due to separation or divorce.Most civil wedding ceremonies take place in Coronation Street; Emmerdale has the least.

Coronation Street has the greatest number of Christmas/New Year weddings.

The divorce rate across all three soaps is similar, but considerably higher than in reality. 39% of the soap weddings ended in divorce over the five years; the nearest approximation of an equivalent real life divorce figure would be 6-10 per cent of marriages over five years. The average length of marriage at which divorce occurs is 11.6 years.

Commenting on the results of the study, Chris Pitt of Ecclesiastical Insurance, said: “As a specialist in wedding insurance, we were interested to see how much television’s portrayal of marriage diverges from reality. While we all accept and understand that the soaps have to accentuate events for dramatic purposes, we were interested to see just how much skewing was being done.

“While many viewers innately know that the rate at which marriages fail in soaps is going to be high, what we’ve found anecdotally is that people don’t realise how low the UK divorce rate actually is. They believe the soaps are more representative than they really are. We were also struck by the findings that some aspects of marriage in the soaps are quite accurate. For example, the percentage of weddings in Coronation Street which are civil ceremonies is virtually the same as the national figure.

“A wedding is one of the most stressful times in any couple’s life together and many things can and do go wrong – even in the real world. All it takes is a couple of mishaps and it’s not long before a real wedding starts to feel like a soap opera.”

According to Ecclesiastical’s own data based on the weddings it insures, around one-in-10 marriage ceremonies is cancelled in advance – although not at the altar, as occurs in the soap operas. Once cancelled many real life weddings will go ahead at a later date.

Published by http://www.whitehavennews.co.uk