Viewers were emotional wrecks watching The Royle Family last night

The Royle Family's Queen of Sheba has always been an emotional special episode, but it had viewers weeping for a rather different reason last night as they paid tribute to the late Caroline Aherne during an emotional broadcast of the 2006 classic.

Fans of the show shared heartfelt tributes for its dearly departed co-creator, who died in July, as the BBC aired a re-run of the BAFTA winning episode in which nana sadly passes away, just after Ricky Tomlinson's episode of Who Do You Think You Are?

The tears flowed quite freely for nana in 2006, but there was an emotional DELUGE for both the matriarch and Aherne just a decade later.

People just couldn't cope.

There were reaffirmations of the Mrs Merton creator's genius.

Others couldn't help but reiterate their belief that she had been taken far too soon.

And everyone was in agreement about one thing.