The confrontation takes place on the small suburban cul-de-sac where the show was mainly set, between Jimmy Corkhill, one of the stalwarts of the soap, and an unpleasant new figure, Jack Michaelson, a drug dealer despised by the local residents.

Jimmy, a former small-time drug dealer and renowned hard man himself, takes it upon himself to tell Michaelson to sling his hook. Unimpressed, Michaelson simply stares Jimmy out with the words, ‘fuck off’.

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It’s a superb moment: it’s a genuinely funny moment, but probably largely funny because of its incongruence. Jimmy finds it shocking, and we share his surprise. Jimmy’s shocked for two reasons.

Firstly, he’s being told to ‘fuck off’ inside the confines of British soapville. Even in Brookside, controversial and edgy though it might have been, there are rules preventing that kind of language.

Secondly, it’s as if some code of honour has been broken. 1980s Brookside might have been edgy and ‘gritty’, if you will, but it certainly wasn’t vulgar. It was darker, harder, and perhaps more working class, but if it was, it was generally a ‘respectable’ working class. Something had changed.

I’m reminded of Mary Whitehouse’s naïve but rather quaint belief that dock workers never said spoke a stronger word than ‘bloody’. Some kind of artificial frontier’s been crossed, and as the camera pans in to Jimmy’s astonished face, he realises it too.

With the news that Brookside Close’s thirteen houses are being collectively auctioned off in December 2008, with a guide price around the £600,000 mark, it’s worth briefly considering just what Brookside stood for.

It’s almost a cinch that such a large collection of modern houses formerly used as the basis for a successful television soap opera will go for more than the guide price. However, the catalogue of failures, bankruptcies and extended commercial dealings involved with the private sale of the houses robs the moment of much of the symbolic/nostalgic interest it might otherwise have had.

The history of the sale of the close is about as shambolic as the final couple of years of the show. Patience and sentiment have disappeared out of the window and everyone is keen to finish off the lame duck.

Brookside’s twenty-one year history as Channel 4’s flagship soap opera ended in late 2003. The final few months were somewhat ignominious; for a drama previously applauded for its ability to reflect genuine social concerns into a mainstream format, with high ratings throughout most of its tenure, to end its days in a graveyard slot doesn’t quite seem fitting. Having said that, the writing had been on the wall for years.

For a supposedly working-class soap, Brookside had a lot of ambiguities that haven’t always been recognised. Most of these manifested themselves during the final decade of the show, but scratch the surface of the soap and its ‘working-class’ identity becomes ever more dubious.

Liverpool, it seems, has long walked the line between lamented post-industrial depressed city and proclaimed ‘city of culture’, a city modernised both culturally and artistically. Brookside served as a form of connective tissue between the two poles.

There are those who would argue that Brookside’s biggest artistic legacy was as a snap-shot of gritty working class life, a mainstream, serialised Boys from the Blackstuff, particularly in its critical heyday in the 1980s. But for those who would try to characterise the soap in such terms, a brief history lesson may be in order.

The producers would no doubt argue that Brookside’s identity changed over the years to reflect the time. But Brookside was always essentially a middlebrow production.

Brookside close was built specially for the show before production started in 1982, partly because of practicality, but largely to aim towards ‘realism’. But when the words ‘1980s Liverpool’ flare up, a leafy, self-contained suburban cul-de-sac isn’t the first image that springs to mind.

Even in the 80s, there was a sizable yuppie contingent in the cast, which remained with the show throughout its run. Talking about hard-edged characters like Barry and Sheila Grant, Jimmy Corkhill and Jack Michaelson is fine, but let’s not take our eyes off the ball. One of the soap’s most popular 1990s character was an upper-class old fellow called Bing Crosby.

But how does a popular national soap, noted for its strong regional cultural slant, reflect big changes in culture? Awkwardly, is the answer. Liverpool’s cultural make-over – real or imagined – promoted two very big changes to Brookside in the mid-1990s.

The action became more focused on a new ‘parade’, a nearby development of shops, bars, nightclubs and restaurants. This was an obvious attempt to broaden the remit into a more glitzy, suburban format, ostensibly reflecting Liverpool’s rejuvenation and recovery programs.

Then, in 1995, Hollyoaks emerged. Like Brookside, Hollyoaks was created by Phil Redmond. Crucially, though, it was set in Chester, not Liverpool. Hollyoaks was plush, upmarket, had a much younger cast, and was more fashionable and media-friendly. Brookside, meanwhile, had a lot of baggage. It wasn’t sexy enough, wasn’t modern enough and carried with it too much class history. Louder, dumber, noisier, faster, stupider…say what you will, but Hollyoaks is still going strong.

Hollyoaks is what Brookside latterly tried to be, and failed: a generalised, national, truly middlebrow soap opera.

• Noel Brown is a writer and academic

Rather bizarrely there’s a channel on Sky (Channel 176) that’s seemingly devoted to Liverpool’s Capital of Culture in 2008.

I’d recommend it but it seems to consist solely of people who are on the outskirts of the consciousness of even noted media commentators such as myself – nevermind the average Jimmy in the street – simply talking about the city with little obvious structure or real point to proceedings.

If you’re listlessly flicking channels, and you’ve shelled out to join the legions of dead-eyed souls keeping Rupert Murdoch in Cayman Islands islands and young hot Asian babes, then have a look. I challenge you to watch for more than five minutes.

There’s also been the varying takes of Les Dennis and Alexei Sayle on the city recently, both of which were entertaining enough but a little unfulfilling. Dennis’ effort particularly rather had the feeling of a tourist board film, so desperate was he to put over his city, while Alexei (who is nevertheless fantastic) struggled to make his doc about the city rather than himself.

BBC4′s effort – Liverpool on the Box is available on iPlayer here and crops up on BBC4 every now and then.

It’s quite incredible to contemplate the sheer weight of talent and fantastic programming that’s come out Liverpool over the years, and it’s worth listing some of the work that’s hailed from the city.

Bread, Brookside, Boys From the Blackstuff, GBH, Hillsborough, Lucky, One Summer. Willy Russell, Jimmy McGovern, Alan Bleasdale. You really do forget how much TV there is. Surely there’s no other one city that makes its geography and people the stars of so many shows.

It’s worth remembering too that Liverpool is currently served by Hollyoaks – one of the worst programmes in the history of television. A sad state of affairs, and one that may prompt you to ponder where the next crop of talent will come from.

Other duff Liverpool fare of late has included Lilies, the risible Liverpool One and Mersey Beat – the latter were parodied amusingly on BBC Liverpool’s own website as Scousey Cop.

The city has also become something of a staple in those terrible but curiously watchable reality TV programmes such as The One About The Adelphi, The One About The Airport and its Horribly Rude Check-In Staff, The One About Ambulances and The One Where the Bloke Who’s Charged With Murder Says ‘Mer-deh?’.

There’s loads of cracking historical footage of the city too, including an early documentary on the city’s streets, Liverpool’s footy and music obsessions, the Toxteth riots, Hatton and Militant and dockers disputes.

Hilariously a typically 60′s BBC man turns up at the Kop at one point and is moved to describe the exotic experience as: ‘as rich and mystifying a culture as any south-sea island’.

But watching Liverpool on the Box simply makes you want to go and watch Boys From the Blackstuff, GBH and all the rest again. Even Bread which, along with all of Carla Lane’s other work, was terrible has a certain place in my nostalgic heart.

If the documentary hints at making a point it’s that Liverpool’s bursts of creativity seem to be inspired by hardship, of which the city has famously had its fair share. Phil Redmond actually vocalises this notion, pointing out that the 60′s and 80′s were the two great bursts in Liverpool creativity and expecting the next one.

It’s unfortunate that Redmond’s recent hits include the aforementioned Hollyoaks and presiding over the 2008 Capital of Culture celebrations featuring the Wombats, Ringo Starr and Dave Stewart, but the sheer depth and breadth of talent the city’s produced makes you hopeful 2008 will be remembered for more than that.

In the meantime, go and watch Boys again, and make sure you catch Liverpool on the Box before it vanishes into the ether.