NOBODY should have been surprised when young David Platt was caught shoplifting in Coronation Street. He's just the latest in a long line of teenage tearaways favoured by soap storyliners.

With his family history it was only a matter of time before he deviated from the straight and narrow - his schoolgirl sister has just had a baby, his father has been having an affair and his mother resembles a chipmunk.

The crime capital of the soap world, though, is not Weatherfield but Walford. The arrival of Dot Cotton's grandson Ashley the other week signalled that another bad boy was in town.

One of his first acts was to pinch pineapples off Mark's market stall. There followed instances of petty larceny, culminating in an attempt to steal money from his grandmother's purse. He even gave Mark Fowler, a Grant Mitchell in the making if ever I saw one, a run for his money by wearing his clothes and nicking his computer games.

Mark is a lad with his head in the clouds due mainly to the fact that although he's barely old enough to shave, he stands head and shoulders above everyone else in EastEnders. Perhaps the air's thinner up there and lack of oxygen is making him behave badly.

Either that or being brought up by a baggy cardigan called Pauline. He and his pals are forever stealing, drinking, being rude to people and generally making a nuisance of themselves.

Perhaps more worrying, the usually-surly Mark has being showing a sensitive side in his relationship with young Nicky De Marco after her maths teacher touched her up. Mark being nice is much more alarming than Mark the menace.

There are signs too that his friend Asif Malik (so called because he always says, "As if I'd do that" after being accused of a misdemeanour) is vying for the title of Walford's top teen troublemaker.

After Pauline gave him a ticking off he arranged for a friend to ram his vehicle into her launderette. Unfortunately he missed and wrecked the neighbouring First 'til Last store where Terry and Irene were enacting pages of the Kama Sutra (but that's another story - and one for adults only).

Then there's Janine, newly installed at Ian's Caf (formerly Kaf's Caf) where she spits at customers more than the bacon in the frying pan. Not so much service with a smile as with a scowl.

Since arriving back in Walford, Frank Butcher's daughter has got drunk, faked pregnancy, thrown a wild party, seduced Jamie and then told everyone he was a flop in the sack. If there was an A-level in being malicious Janine would be top of the class.

Sometimes it seems that sensible Sonia Jackson is the only responsible teenager in the Square although Jamie - the scrawny youth who resembles a startled greyhound - is displaying alarming changes of character.

He was once a graffiti-spraying youth resentful of authority. Now he's handing out advice all over. After matchmaking between Lisa and Phil, he's got all tongue- tied about asking Sonia out.

If they're not going on a crime spree, soap teens are trying to jump into bed with each other. Shy Jamie would have no trouble getting a date with Kelly Windsor from Emmerdale. Having slept her way through the entire male population (except for Seth) of this small farming community, she needs to expand her horizons. No wonder even a friend referred to her as a "cockney slapper".

For starters, Kelly of the arched eyebrows took extra-curricular sex lessons from her teacher. Then she had a one night stand with Biff, got pregnant, slept with her employer Chris Tate and claimed the baby was his.

She's now married the hapless Roy after sleeping with her stepbrother Scott. We should be glad her father was shot in a post office robbery or heaven knows where that relationship would have ended up.

Tim and Emily, the Bonnie and Clyde of Brookside Close, haven't got around to armed robbery but give them time. The Scouse soap Brookside has seen its share of troublemakers and gangsters but this pair of tormenting teens take some beating.

Emily's the ringleader and her motive is revenge. She's upset because her father had an affair with a neighbour. He was killed in one of Brookie's regular explosions - he was having sex with mistress Susannah in the showers at the Millennium Club when the bomb went off. The earth moved and Greg Shadwick went to the soap cemetery in the sky.

Susannah survived. Emily blamed her for her father's death and recruited boyfriend Tim, who'd given up his former life of crime, to help her take revenge. Dangle the prospect of rumpy-pumpy in front of Tim and he's putty in her hands.

Their escapades have included having tons of manure dumped on Susannah's doorstep, stealing her car and setting fire to it, and distributing cards offering her services as a call girl. Their misbehaviour make shoplifter David Platt look squeaky clean.