Neighbours first aired in 1985, and the show has become such a part of our lives, it's hard to imagine life without it. The funny storylines and gorgoues looking cast and friendly charactors, have made it a big hit with all the family. Neighbours is Australia's most succesful show ever, being show in over 50 countries.

It hasn't always been high ratings, and great reviews, for Ramsey street. It's first year was touch and go, and it looked unlikely it would last a year. The winning formula was dreamt up by Reg Watson, who had produced other succesful soaps down under and in the u.k. His idea was three very simple families. The Ramseys, The Robinsons and The Clarkes living in the same street. Although it was too simple. Reg wrote twenty drafts of the first script to get the balence between humour, drama, friendliness, and rivalry just right.

The next problem was to find the street. When a location scout found a cul de sac, near the Melbourne studios, they knew they'd found Ramsey Street. They asked the house owners if they'd mind a few months of inconvenience, because no one thought it would last that long. Now tourists visit there street every week.
The producers picked some well know faces for the cast, such as Anne Hardy, Alan Dale and Elaine Smith. When ratings failed to pickup, channel seven pulled the plug on the soap after only 170 eps.

Ian Holmes form Grundy believed in the show, and got channel10 to take them on. Grundy used this time to axe some charactors that weren't working, and to introduce some younger faces, such as Charlene. A lot of promotion went on, because the ratings didn't improve. Sydney refused to watch it , due to the rivalry with Melbourne. Neighbours was bought by the BBC to liven up daytime viewing.the soap was shown in the UK on 27 October 1986, and though it was only aired in the morning and at lunch times, it still attracted a loyal audience. During the school holidays the figures swelled as schoolkids got hooked on the light-hearted mix of harmless pranks, mini crises, and minute romances. And when the school days finished, thousands of students watched in their lunch hours or even skiped school to see key episodes! It was one pupil in particular who brought this trend to the attention of the BBC: Alison Grade, the daughter of the BBC's head of programming at the time, Michael Grade, and he ordered that Neighbours should get a post-school timeslot to catch the younger viewers.

So the Aussie soap was moved to 5.35 where it has flourished ever since, attracting audiences of up to 16 million! Perhaps by way of a thank you, Alison later got a job with Thames Television, which by 1995 was a sister company to Grundy.

The huge success of Neighbours meant that canny theatre promoters and record producers wanted to use the stars of the show in various productions. In just a couple of years, British theatres were packed with fans desperate to catch a glimpse of their hero or heroine as they appeared in countless pantomimes every Christmas, and the top ten had a couple of new stars too.

Kylie Minogue was the first of the Neighbours' stars to have a stab at the recording industry, but the single that launched her singing career only came about by accident. She arrived on the doorstep of record producers Mike Stock and Matt Aitken with only an hour to spare before she had to fly back to Australia. Mike and Matt hadn't been expecting the diminutive star and asked her to wait while they wrote a song for her there and then! Kylie recorded it in one take and 'I Should Be So Lucky' topped the charts for five weeks. Not bad for an hour's work!

Jason Donovan, who, of course, played Kylie's on-screen boyfriend, soon followed suit and joined Kylie in the charts. Kylie and Jason's popularity helped to raise the profile of the show and even more people started to watch. At the same time, Kylie and Jason's greatest storyline - Scott and Charlene's wedding - was taking place on screen and their popularity spi-ralled into a frenzy. Their chart success was matched later by the success of Natalie Imbruglia who combined the tricky task of achieving both critical and commercial acclaim with her single 'Torn' and her No 1 selling first album, 'Left of the Middle.' Photo (right) courtesy of RCA Records.

In 1988, at the Australian television equiva-lent of the Oscars - the Logies - Kylie took the ceremony by storm, winning an unrivalled four awards in the one night. She even picked up the Gold Logie for Most Popular Television Personality. Jason picked up the award for Most Popular Actor on the same night, and Neighbours itself also won in the Most Popular Drama Series category, but instead of celebrating, Kylie returned to her hotel room where she collapsed in tears.

The arduous workload and constant pressure of being in the hottest show on the planet had finally got to her. The attention of the press didn't help either, and all the stars of Neighbours found that the tiniest aspects of their personal lives had suddenly become big news. One British paper realised just how popular the show was and offered a competition to win a trip to the Neighbours set. The newspaper's offices and staff were swamped with a staggering one million entries - in just three days!

Kylie and Jason may have been the ultimate boy and girl-next-door for millions of viewers right around the world, but of course it wasn't just these two who signalled the soap's success. The sunny location scenes and the lack of poverty certainly contrasted with the usual British fare of gritty, grimy soaps like Coronation Street and EastEnders. Some experts also claimed that Neighbours' commitment to family values had particular resonance for a society just starting to come to terms with AIDS. Whether or not that's true, the after-school timeslot certainly helped and Neighbours became the perfect way to relax from the day into the evening for millions of UK viewers.

Of course it's impossible to single out any one particular reason why Neighbours has been so spectacularly successful for a decade now, but whatever the recipe's secret ingredient is, it's certainly a magic blend.

Naturally, when anything gets as much attention as Neighbours has had, not all of it will be appreciative. Some claimed the plots were silly and unrealistic, others said that it set a bad example for teenagers who were rarely seen doing their homework, and even the TV watch-dogs criticised it for failing to feature any racial minorities - and showing too many adults drinking alcohol!

All the criticisms were taken on board which made Neighbours a stronger show that continued to find the international pulse and create storylines for the never-ending supply of engaging characters. Whatever the secret formula, the remarkable feature of the show is the sheer cross-section of its fans - from royalty (rumoured to include the late Princess Diana and the Queen Mother) to university students to mums and kids at home. The reason for the show's success will no doubt always remain a mystery but because it never fails to entertain you can bet that the Neighbours will be with us for quite some to come!