Please excuse me if the newspaper feels damp but I am writing this column from the Valley of Tears. Actually, I'm writing it from the couch in the living room while watching a tape of Dundee United playing Manchester United in the 1984 Uefa Cup, but I'm sure you know what I mean.

A very dear friend of mine has passed away, someone who played a significant role in shaping my character when I was growing up and, hence, made me the person I am. No doubt you had a mentor, too, when you were but a slip of a lad or lass; a brother, a neighbour or a kindly teacher who didn't slap you over the head with a ruler because you were staring out of the window at a third-year-girls' netball class when you were supposed to be learning quotations from Lewis Grassic Gibbon, aka Mr Depresso, but instead forgave you because that's what kindly teachers do.

I never had any kindly teachers. They were all creeps, really, especially my head teacher, whose sole contribution to my juvenile development was to tell me that I would never succeed at anything that didn't involve lifting bags of coal. Well, I showed him. Look at me now. Top of the world, ma.

Okay, I'm not exactly top of the world, ma, but I do still have some of my own hair and I once did a book-reading at Waterstones on Sauchiehall Street - to which, incidentally, fewer than two of you came.

Anyway, where was I? Oh, yes. I'm devastated at the loss of someone very dear to me. Frankly, I don't know how I am going to get over it, although it will probably help that the person who has died isn't actually a real person.

I am, of course, talking about Vera Duckworth, who passed away last night in a specially extended edition of Coronation Street. It was awful. Coronation Street has been awful since - middle-aged cultural reference alert! - Hilda Ogden left. Fortunately, I didn't have to watch last night's show because it was on at the same time as the rugby from Firhill. But I did read all about it in yesterday's Financial Times, or it could have been the Daily Sport.

Apparently, Vera and Jack - her husband and also not a real person - were getting ready to move to Blackpool to start a new life when the Grim Reaper arrived with the bad news. The exact cause of death is not known at the time of writing but I'm presuming it was nothing undramatic.

Soap characters aren't allowed to die undramatically these days. If my memory serves me correctly (which would be a first) Hilda met her end when she fell over her mop and pail while cleaning the kitchen floor. It was a tragic way to die but at least she went in a way that was appropriate for her character.

As I say, I don't know exactly what happened last night but Vera probably died in a mysterious bra explosion set off by the infrared fall-out from a passing spacecraft driven by two former members of Girls Aloud who have been brought in to boost the ratings.

Frankly, Vera deserved a more dignified exit, and here's why: she made me feel that, no matter how bad my life was, there was someone out there whose life was even worse: hers.

I wouldn't want you to think I had an impoverished upbringing but it was fairly hard going. For instance, there was the time my mother refused to allow us to have our family car painted to look like the motor in Starsky and Hutch. How cruel was that? Of course, there was no ChildLine to call back in those days. You just had to learn how to cope with such terrible deprivation, and one of the ways I coped was by watching Coronation Street to see the latest misfortune that had befallen Vera Duckworth.

Her son Terry stole her money and her husband Jack had an affair with Bet Lynch. Most calamitously of all, her father arrived at the front door claiming that he was the illegitimate son of King Edward VII, which would have meant she was related to the royal family, including Prince Andrew.

Imagine the horror of possibly having the chinless wonder as a relative.

I know it was only a TV show but even now the thought sends chills down the back of my legs.

Poor Vera had to live with that kind of tragedy her entire life. And now she's gone. It is probably a relief. I know it is for me: yet another reason not to watch Coronation Street.