TV Hero: Carla Leach

Back in the late nineties, when all the soaps were stuck in a gritty realism rut, there was one place to go for non-stop psychos, backstabbing and earthquakes-represented-purely-by-cameras-shaking. And that place was 5.10pm weekdays on Central TV.

Yep, Shortland Street was the sole proponent for melodrama in that bleak era before Home and Away discovered stalkers and Emmerdale was trying to get over its ill-fated dalliance with Redmond. And at the pinnacle of its crazed mentalism was Carla Leach. Being the sister of the clinic's pillar of society Ellen Crozer, it was perhaps inevitable that Carla would be the exact opposite – but not even the demented writing staff could have predicted where the crazy character would go.

From her early days as minor bitch – spiking Ellen’s stroganoff with cannabis to steal her job, faking rape, etc – Carla became public enemy number one when she stole Ellen’s wealthy lover Bernie (though Ellen was only pretending to fancy Bernie as she knew Carla would indeed try to steal him…). Before we knew it, she was pushing her new beau off yatchs, framing him for spousal abuse and battering him to death with a candelabra during the aforementioned earthquake-on-the-cheap.

And who could forget her attempts to poison dull ambo officer Sam with broken glass – well actually I could, as there were quite a few things Central weren’t prepared to show at 5.10pm. Anyway, in the end Carla came up against rival nurse Tiffany a few many times and was dispatched to the loony bin never to be seen again. And Shorters was never quite the same…

…well until the next psycho arrived. See also: Darrell Neilson (Marge’s psycho son), Dr Ian Seymour (Jenny’s psycho cardio-surgeon beau), MacKenzie Choat (Lionel’s pscho psychiatrist fiancé), and many more.