I have grumbled before that the only university student in the series never does any studying or talks about it, and clearly the grumble has been heard.

Not only has Toyah the lone student actually done an art project but - with its gnarled northern finger firmly on the pulse of current controversy - the Street last week barged into the great university entrance inclusivity debate.

Signs are promising for a continuing strand of plot, provided they don’t lose their nerve, or grow bored and turn the focus back on the story of the serial-murdering financial adviser.

What happened is this. Todd is the younger and less dashing son of Big Rough Eileen, the taxi-dispatcher with a heart of gold and a tongue of sandpaper. Todd has been lovesick for 15-year-old single mother Sarah Louise (stepdaughter of the serial killer, pay attention there at the back!).

She has spurned him, preferring to snog with a creature in an eyebrow ring who hot-wires cars. Todd’s lovesickness, though, has just been alleviated by his form teacher dropping a bombshell: he has been told he is “Oxbridge material”.

Eileen is so excited she is doing extra shifts to help him pay the expected vast costs of a “uni” away from home. Most Weatherfield kids go local or not at all. And Todd, as she says, is not only the first in the family to consider university but “the first who could do joined-up writing”.

Now, there are a lot of interesting places the scriptwriters can go from here. At worst it could just fizzle out, treated as yet another story of broken dreams, in which the Street specialises. It could be a brief ploy, caused by the young actor demanding to be written out so he can become a pop singer.

But it could - cross fingers - go the whole way. Now that, I would love. And so would Oxford and Cambridge university authorities, and those of every other elite, reputedly middle-class university in the land.

We could see Todd frowning over his UCAS form, and borrowing Sarah-Lou’s chatroom computer to surf for courses, identifying the whereabouts of dons who specialise in his area. We could follow him off to interview, where to his happy amazement he would find other kids not unlike himself, as well as the inevitable chorus of posh Henries and Henriettas.

We could see him questioned, tested, left to stew in the JCR for hours then interviewed again, by a selection of terrifying dons (possibly including one who says “Coronation Street? By ‘eck, lad, I grew up round corner in Bessie Street.”

We could see him come back home, to battle against the general view in the Rovers Return that Oxbridge is for “snobs”.

If he’s lucky, their attention will be diverted by that time to a couple of fresh adulteries and the unmasking of the murderous financial adviser. Then, in the Christmas Special, Todd could get his conditional offer (my, how the colleges will be fighting for that honour! Having a Coronation Street character is considerably better for your credibility these days than having Prince William or Euan Blair).

He could work all year, earnestly, even refusing the blandishments of Sarah-Lou to put more hours into his personal study. Then there could be a dramatic regrading showdown with the OCR exam board over whatever weird and unwholesome procedure they go in for next year, and at last, next autumn, we could have the scene where Eileen commandeers one of the company minicabs to deliver Todd to the old stone cloisters and pointy spires of his new home - where he will discover to his amazement that several of the Hooray Henries didn’t get in, whereas he did.

Vice-chancellors would ply Granada scriptwriters with the very best college port in return for a plot-line like that.

Then we could just have occasional snapshots and visits from Todd, growing ever more confident and baffling the minicab office with light references to tutors, mods, collections and subfusc.

Perhaps he could bring home a girlfriend from Roedean. Perhaps he will get a first and come back north to do post-graduate studies at UMIST.

Perhaps higher education will at last gain Street credibility...