So lucky, lucky, lucky  Where are the actors now? As Neighbours
celebrates two decades on our screens, Mark Lawson reflects on
how an unsuccessful Australian soap changed British TV for ever
• The Guardian,     • Jump to comments () For all that Michael
Grade has achieved in broadcasting - MD of LWT, chief executive
of Channel 4, chairman of the BBC - the person responsible for
what was probably the Grade family's most far-reaching
intervention in television was his daughter. As a teenager, she
reported the fury of her classmates at missing Neighbours, a
cheap daily series which her dad had bought from Australia to
pad the BBC1 schedule after the lunchtime news, and which began
in Britain in October 1986. Becoming addicted to the dramas of
Melbourne's Ramsay Street during the holidays or when off-school
sick, the girls found themselves contemplating truancy to keep
up with the narrative.  Grade protected the education of a
generation by repeating Neighbours at 5.35pm from January 1988.
This decision was l