Den ’n’ Ange
“Hello, princess.” When the shouty Cockney miseryfest launched in 1985, Queen Vic licensees Dennis and Angie Watts soon became its surprise hit characters. The Fowler/Beale clan were intended to be the drama’s emotional centre but the warring Watts’ stormy marriage was way more compelling. He was womanising hardman Dirty Den: a part-time gangster, forever sneaking off to see posh mistress Jan and impregnating Michelle Fowler on the pub carpet. She was Walford’s answer to Sue Ellen from Dallas: glam but brittle, all shoulder pads, batwing sleeves, blue eyeshadow, faux-fur and mohair, gulping down gin from the optics while her bubble perm trembled neurotically. Together with giant poodle Roly and stroppy teen daughter Sharon (handily, the two had matching hairstyles), Den ’n’ Ange became a tabloid obsession. On Christmas Day, 1986, half the nation slumped on their sofas in a turkey coma to watch Den snarlingly serve Ange with divorce papers. At 30.15 million viewers, it’s still the top-rated soap episode in British TV history. “Happy Christmas, Ange.”
Michael Hogan
Nick Cotton’s domain of evil
John Altman’s half-smirk when he delivers his trademark “Hello Ma” is surely Bafta-worthy. The pantomime dame of doom started off as a bog standard murderer when he bumped off Reg Cox, but since then he’s poisoned, lied, killed again and faked his own death. But none of that compares to sending his poor old ma, the long-suffering Dot, to a tower block to buy his heroin. His gold chain remained stuck in 1985, but his sinister skills moved up a level with every decade.
Hannah Verdier
Pensioners
Back in the 80s, old people were pretty rubbish accessories. Ethel and her Little Willy offered nothing other than idle gossip and the opportunity for a generation of teens to titter at the words “Little” and “Willy” in the same sentence. Nowadays, Cora and Stan are living it large. The beehived granny always looks like she’s fresh from a spot of afternoon delight with her hairdo like a lusty bird’s nest, as Stan follows her round like a frisky Carry On character. And Dot Cotton, like the fine sweet sherry she sips, just gets better with age. The legend.
HV
Warpaint
When the going gets tough, Walford’s women ask WWPBD? Yes, What Would Pat Butcher Do? The answer, of course, is put on some spangly earrings, far too much makeup and paint on a smile. It’s always been thus. Original ’Enders survivor Mary the punk had few skills, but she sure knew how to flick that eyeliner. Fast forward 30 years and Kat emerged from the ashes of her relationship with Alfie with her head (and boobs) held high, resplendent in thigh-skimming boots and eyes as smoky as her house. When Linda Carter put on the red sequinned dress of defiance, it was a look that said: “You ain’t beaten me, Deano.” Essential survival tactics for the women of Walford, who, as ever, prove to be stronger than the men.
HV
Frank Butcher
Perhaps the most mimicked male soap character ever. Just rub the bridge of your nose while rasping “Pat Pat Pat, heeeeeey baby baby, no Rickeee, you doughnut”. Behold: you are wily wheeler-dealer Francis Aloysius Butcher, played by Mike “Runaround” Reid. The teak-tanned wideboy spent the 90s on the Albert Square car lot, clad in a sheepskin coat, golfing cap and tinted Reactolite specs, turning on the patter for punters but occasionally breaking off to bawl at idiot offspring Ricky for tinkering wiv the motors or evil offspring Janine for murdering another husband. Frank was partial to calling people a “prawn”, “whelk” or “double yolker”, then threatening them with a “dry slap”. Tribute is paid with the touching memorial plaque that’s still on the Square to this day: “Frank Butcher: husband, father, pilchard”. His finest hour, though, was when he seduced his beloved Pat in 2000 by turning up on her doorstep naked except for a Pearl Drops grin and revolving bow tie. Who could resist? Not Pat Pat Pat, that’s for sure.
MH
Murder
Cars, guns, knives: all traditional ways to kill off characters. But with more than 100 deaths, you need to up your game if you’re planning an EastEnders murder. Weapons have become more inventive over the years, with Pauline Fowler finished off with a frying pan, Hev Trott ended by a photo frame and the all-seeing Queen Vic bust bumping off evil Archie Mitchell. But it was Ronnie who brought the art of murder into a glamorous new era when she battered sleazebag Carl White with a bottle of champagne. Chin chin indeed.
HV
Villains, numpties and Arthur Fowler
There was never any question of identifying with any male among the unremitting parade of Hogarthian trolls on EastEnders. Ian Beale? Please. Mark Fowler. Just don’t. Its men were mostly testerone-crazed numpties like Grant and Phil, pantomime villains like Nick Cotton or token simpletons Lofty the barman. Or, worse, Pete Beale, the glad-handing nightmare of a fruit and veg geezer who kept his own pretentious tankard in a state of readiness behind the Queen Vic bar. In such woeful circumstances, one cleaved – did one not? – to Arthur Fowler, despite or perhaps because of the psychic wound that made him go postal on the cabbages at his allotment that time. The actor who played him, genial Bill Treacher, had apple cheeks and a haircut that time forgot. Like Lou Beale, the mother-in-law with whom he had a hate-hate relationship, he hailed or looked as if he hailed from ration book East End. It never made any sense to me that such a man (imagine, say, John Mills in Noel Coward’s This Happy Breed had a less glamorous chum) could captivate Pauline Fowler, the woman played by Wendy Richard, who had earlier been the hottie Miss Brahms in Are You Being Served? Yes, Arthur, body probably emaciated by a wartime diet of spam fritters and powdered eggs, was the salt of the earth, but not the sort of geezer who could have pulled Miss Brahms to the soundtrack of Barry White in a club out Romford way. And yet, counterintuively, that must have been what had happened.
Stuart Jeffries
Big hair
Linda Carter: channelling the spirit of Angie Watts, one backcomb at a time. Poodle perms were the 80s landlady’s weapon of choice, but blonde booze bombshell Linda has coiffed her way into the new millennium with her doughnut bun. The hairspray’s a health and safety risk considering how many times that pub’s gone up in flames, but sometimes you need to risk it all for glamour.
HV
Ian Beale
Wet blanket, hipster-bearded tramp, lothario who eats chips in a hot tub: The Beale has had many incarnations over the years. He celebrates his 30th anniversary of Bealeness in better shape than ever, about to walk down the aisle for the fifth time. Who cares if had to bribe Mel to marry him? Or if Cindy found him so irksome she hired a hitman? The man’s still got it. What “it” is remains a mystery. How can someone with a face like a disappointed dog run a pack of such fabulous women? There’s Denise Fox (the clue’s in the name), who’s still holding a torch for him as he prepares to marry Jane again. And let’s not forget his forbidden lust with the soap goddess who charges by the hour, Rainie Cross. He’s as hot as the sausage rolls he so expertly lays on a buffet.
HV
Fashion killers
One day something unacceptable happened on EastEnders. Albert Square bad boy Paul Trueman came into the Queen Vic wearing a pink version of my Nicole Farhi shirt. I retired mine from active service immediately. Years later the same thing happened after I glimpsed James May on Top Gear wearing a floral shirt exactly the same as mine, his beta male beer gut intolerably swelling its otherwise lovely design. I rushed it round to the charity shop lickety-split. Not that there was anything wrong with Paul Trueman – he was a tasty herbert with moxy to spare. It would have been much worse if the shirt had been worn by his good-goody GP brother or, please God no, one of that dismal double act, the Potato Head brothers starring Grant and Phil Mitchell. It’s just that, sartorially, nobody in the real world ever wanted to be associated with EastEnders. With the exception of Dot Cotton …
SJ
Dot in a spin
Autre temps, autre moeurs. Dot Cotton used to smoke fags in the launderette! There she is now, in my memory, staring through the window into the street, thinking about nothing much, one hand cupping an elbow, the other holding a newly lit cigarette. Much as I admired Dot’s 50s “Italian boy” haircut, her decades-long dedication to vintage blouses and, latterly, how she cared for poor old Jim Branning, that’s insane. Who in their right minds would entrust a service wash to that launderette? Particularly as the other women working there had existential issues too. Pauline with her permafrost greeting, insanitary Ethel eternally clutching her Little Willy. What with the dog hair and the square’s Fag Ash Lil waving her cig over your duvet, your laundry would come out dirtier than it went in. If only Dot had had the entrepreneurial acumen to match her fashion sense (ruffle Dot’s hair, give her some shades and – voila! – John Cooper Clarke), she would have binned off Pauline and Ethel, and opened a 50s milk bar for hand-jiving neo-Mods and Beats. Shoreditch Twats would have queued round the block for a table in the smoking area where Dot would have dispensed biblical homilies and single Silk Cuts. If only.
SJ
Mick Carter
Jog on, you mug. Come here, you saucy little mare. Pwopah nawty Cockney cult hero Danny Dyer once vowed that he wouldn’t do EastEnders until he was “fat, bald and 50”. Aged 36, though, he swaggered into Walford on Christmas Day 2013 to play Mick Carter, new landlord of the Queen Vic. It was inspired casting and Dyer has been a revelation, playing against gangster type and leading a renaissance in the soap’s fortunes. All dapper peacoats and Fred Perry polos, Mick’s got a wheezing bulldog called Lady Di, a gay son, a lesbian sister and his other sister turned out to be his mum. His perma-drunk dad’s dying of cancer, his mum’s got Alzheimer’s and his secret half-brother raped his wife. Despite such cruel fortune, he’s a soppy, soft-centred teddy bear of a man, prone to welling up and hugging it out. Faaaaaamily innit.
MH
Matriarchs to fear
“I can recall when there was 25 of us round this table for Sunday winkles, and separate tables out in the yard for the kiddies,” said Lou Beale once. The first in a line of exasperating EastEnders’ matriarchs (think: Wendy Richard’s Pauline Fowler, Barbara Windsor’s Peggy Mitchell), Lou greeted the modern world with denial and nostalgic sentiment. She could even reflect on the menopause with trademark anti-empathy and self-mythologising bluster. “I never had all that trouble. I just got on with it. In my day, we fetched ourselves by the bootstraps and carried on, no matter what.” After four years, Anna Wing, a much more interesting EastEnder than the matriarchal cliche she played (Wing was a lifelong pacifist, artist’s model with a Renoir body, partner of surrealist poet Philip O’Connor), asked for her character to be killed off and the scriptwriters obliged. So in 1988, Lou returned from an outing to Leigh-on-Sea feeling ill and retreated to bed. After dispensing putative wisdom to descendants, her last words were: “That’s you lot sorted. I can go now.” After her funeral, her son, Pete, proposed a toast to that “bloody old bag”. Sexist and ageist, no doubt, but, for once, he had a point. EastEnd womankind deserved better than his mum.
SJ
Fatboy Chubb
It sometimes feels like ’Enders is stuck in an idealised 1950s bubble, all chirpy Cockney sparrers and community spirit. Comic relief characters Aunty Kim Fox and Arthur “Fatboy” Chubb, who both arrived in 2010, helped drag the show by the hoodie lapels into the 21st century. Fatboy’s a street-slang-spouting bantersaurus and aspiring dubstep DJ who works in McKlunky’s chicken shop but just temporary, innit. He’s unlucky in love, teams Ed Hardy T-shirts with fluoro sportswear and drives a pimped-out ice-cream van, for reasons which are never quite made clear. One of the most touching relationships in the Square right now is Fatboy’s bond with his landlady and confidante Dot Branning née Cotton. Fatboy’s the son she never had. The anti-Nick Cotton. A hustler with a heart of gold. Dappy from N-Dubz with a Duke of Edinburgh award. Boom-ting, Mrs B. Another cuppa?
MH
