Britain is falling out of love with soap operas, as viewers abandon the shows that once had them gripped.

Thirty million people tuned in to watch the Christmas episode of EastEnders in 1986, when Den served Angie with divorce papers in the Queen Vic.

When Hilda Ogden bade farewell to Coronation Street a year later, an audience of 27 million tuned in.

But new figures from Ofcom show that television audiences across the board have fallen in the past decade.

“Looking at these declines by programme genre, we can see that the decreasing popularity of soaps is driving the overall decline,” the broadcasting watchdog said.

In 2007, there were 172 soap episodes that attracted ratings of over 10 million. By 2015, there were only four, and ratings have not topped 10 million since that year.

The number of episodes with an audience of eight million or more has fallen from 508 in 2007 to just 63 last year.