User:Kelvin 101/EastEnders book references

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Albert Square & Me: The Actors of Eastenders (1)

• The first character to leave the series in 1986 was recurring police officer,
  DS Roy Quick (Douglas Fielding), in July. Andy O'Brien became the first regular character in the series' history to be killed off in August 1986; actor Ross Davidson was axed following an altercation with show producer, Julia Smith
  , in which she threatened to write out his character and Davidson told her to kill him off.

• first half of 1989 encompassed departures for
  Queenie Price (John Labanowski), Colin Russell (Michael Cashman
  )

• https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=tp9ZAAAAYAAJ

• Sandy Ratcliff was recommended for the role and after much concern over her "free spirit", she was cast in the role. (Page ?)

• The couple were scripted to be parents to a young baby named Hassan, who was played by Michael Evangelou. (Page ?)

• Fifteen additional characters were introduced on a regular basis throughout the year. (Page ?)
  Cassie Carpenter. (Page ?) Ross Davidson and Shirley Cheriton were cast as "young couple" Andy O'Brien and Debbie Wilkins
  and began appearing in episode ten. (Page ?)

• The Osman family were expanded throughout the year with the introductions of Ali's brother and sister-in-law,
  Guizin Osman (Ishia Bennison). (Page ?) Nick's Christian, chain-smoking mother, Dot Cotton, was created alongside most of the original cast, with the role cast to June Brown
  . (Page ?)

• Nick Berry was quickly cast as Simon, with Smith calling it one of the fastest on record. (Page ?)

• Johnson chose to leave the show after less than a year, following his disapproval of the storylines he was receiving. (Page ?) Saeed left the show on 26 December 1985, making him the first character to permanently leave the show. (Page ?)

Public Secrets: EastEnders and Its Audience (0)

• Done

First Ten Years (9)

• According to Brake, the departure of two of the soap's most popular characters, Den and Angie Watts (Anita Dobson), left a void in the programme, which needed to be filled.^[1] (Page ?)

• Brake indicated that the production team decided that 1989 was to be a year of change in Walford, commenting, "it was almost as if Walford itself was making a fresh start".^[1] (Page ?)

• EastEnders is often filmed on location, away from the studios in Borehamwood. (Page ?) Sometimes an entire quartet is filmed on location, which has a practical function and are the result of EastEnders making a "double bank", when an extra week's worth of episodes are recorded at the same time as the regular schedule, enabling the production of the programme to stop for a two-week break at Christmas. (Page ?) These episodes often air in late June or early July and again in late October or early November.^[1] (Page ?)

• If scenes during a normal week are to be filmed on location, this is done during the normal recording week.
  Clacton (1989), Devon (September 1990), Hertfordshire (used for scenes set in Gretna Green in July 1991), Portsmouth (November 1991),^[1]
  (Page ?)

• A prominent storyline of 1985 was Michelle Fowler's (Susan Tully) teenage pregnancy and in May 1986, Michelle gave birth to a daughter, Vicki Fowler (Emma Henry).(Page 40-41)

• resulting in the casting of
  Farrukh
  (Sumar Khan) was also introduced. He appeared for several episodes in July, before returning in November to aid Naima's departure. (Page 56))

• The first character to arrive in 1988 was
  Matthew Jackson (Steven Hartley) and Cindy Williams (Michelle Collins) respectively. The character of Cindy was originally meant to be a minor role, where Collins appeared in only eleven episodes, but the character evolved into what writer Colin Brake
  described as "the most important character for the future" to be introduced in 1988. (Page ?))

• Guizin Osman (Ishia Bennison), Mehmet Osman (Haluk Bilginer), Donna Ludlow (Matilda Ziegler
  ) (Page ?))

• They came to the conclusion that Coronation Street had grown old with its audience, and that EastEnders would have to attract a younger, more socially extensive audience, ensuring that it had the longevity to retain it for many years thereafter.[3] (Page ?)

• Other characters created included Jewish doctor
  Hassan Osman, black father and son, Tony Carpenter and Kelvin Carpenter, single mother Mary Smith and Bangladeshi couple Saeed Jeffery and Naima Jeffery. (Page ?) Jack, Pearl and Tracey Watts were created to bring "flash, trash, and melodrama" to the Square (they were later renamed Den Watts, Angie Watts and Sharon Watts). (Page ?) The characters of Andy O'Brien and Debbie Wilkins were created to show a modern couple with outwardly mobile pretensions, and Lofty Holloway
  to show an outsider; someone who did not fit in with other residents. (Page ?) It was decided that he would be a former soldier, as Holland's personal experiences of ex-soldiers were that they had trouble fitting into society after being in the army. (Page ?) When they compared the characters they had created, Smith and Holland realised they had created a cross-section of East End residents (Page ?).

• Other recurring character types that have appeared throughout the serial are "cheeky-chappies"
  Kush Kazemi, (Alfie, Garry and Kush not mentioned in this book) "lost girls" such as Mary Smith, Donna Ludlow and Mandy Salter, delinquents such as Stacey Slater, Jay Brown and Lola Pearce, (Page 113, does not mention Stacey Slater, Jay Brown and Lola Pearce) "villains" such as Nick Cotton, Trevor Morgan, May Wright, Yusef Khan, Archie Mitchell and Dean Wicks (Page 101-103 does no mention May Wright, Yusef Khan, Archie Mitchell and Dean Wicks), "bitches" such as Cindy Beale, Janine Butcher, Lucy Beale, Abi Branning and Babe Smith and cockney "wide boys" or "wheeler dealers"^[3] such as Frank Butcher, Alfie Moon, Kevin Wicks, Darren Miller and Fatboy. (Page 175-177 does not mention Lucy Beale, Abi Branning and Babe Smith ) (Page 71-73 does not mention Frank Butcher, Kevin Wicks, Darren Miller and Fatboy

• The Beale and Fowler family represented the old families of the East End, who had always been there. (Page ?19) The Osmans, Jefferys and Carpenters represented the more modern diverse ethnic community of the East End. (Page ?20) Debbie, Andy and Mary represented more modern day individuals.[3] (Page ?19,)

20 Years in Albert Square

• The outline that Reid presented was vague: two episodes a week, 52 weeks a year. After the concept was put to them on 14 March 1983, Smith and Holland then went about putting their ideas down on paper; they decided it would be set in the East End of London.^[3] (Page 11) (Rewrite needed)

• There was anxiety at first that the viewing public would not accept a new soap set in the south of England, though research commissioned by lead figures in the BBC revealed that southerners would accept a northern soap, northerners would accept a southern soap and those from the
  Midlands, as Julia Smith herself pointed out, did not mind where it was set as long as it was somewhere else. (Page 11) This was the beginning of a close and continuing association between EastEnders and audience research, which, though commonplace today, was something of a revolution in practice.^[3]
  (Page 11)

• In March 1983, under two years before EastEnders' first episode was broadcast, the show was a vague idea in the mind of a handful of BBC executives, who decided that what
  BBC1 needed was a popular bi-weekly drama series that would attract the kind of mass audiences that ITV was getting with Coronation Street. (Page 10) The first people to whom David Reid, then head of series and serials, turned were Julia Smith and Tony Holland, a well established producer/script editor team who had first worked together on Z-Cars. (Page 10) The outline that Reid presented was vague: two episodes a week, 52 weeks a year. After the concept was put to them on 14 March 1983, Smith and Holland then went about putting their ideas down on paper; they decided it would be set in the East End of London.^[3]
  (Page 10)

• The show's creators were both Londoners, but when they researched Victorian squares, they found massive changes in areas they thought they knew well. However, delving further into the East End of London, they found exactly what they had been searching for: a real East End spirit—an inward looking quality, a distrust of strangers and authority figures, a sense of territory and community that the creators summed up as "Hurt one of us and you hurt us all".[3] (Page 11) These themes that were found for the setting can still be found in a present-day episode of EastEnders. (Page 11)

• It was the latter that stuck (E8 is the postcode for Hackney) in the early months of creative process. (Page 15) However, the show was renamed after many casting agents mistakenly thought the show was to be called Estate, and the fictional postcode
  E20 was created, instead of using E8. (Page 15) Julia Smith came up with the name Eastenders after she and Holland had spent months telephoning theatrical agents and asking "Do you have any real East Enders on your books?". (Page 15) However, Smith thought "Eastenders" "looked ugly written down" and was "hard to say", so decided to capitalise the second 'e'.^[3]
  (Page 15)

• There is also a market close to Fassett Square at
  E8, was one of the working titles for the series. (Page 15) The name Walford is both a street in Dalston where Tony Holland lived and a blend of Walthamstow and Stratford—the areas of Greater London where the creators were born.^[3]
  (Page 15)

• The matriarchal role is one that has been seen in various reincarnations since the programme's inception, often depicted as the centre of the family unit.[3] (Page 55)

• Another recurring male character seen in EastEnders is the 'loser' or 'soft touch', males often comically under the thumb of their female counterparts, which have included Arthur Fowler,^[4] Ricky Butcher, Lofty Holloway and Billy Mitchell.^[3] (Page 63-65) Billy Mitchell no mentioned in book section

• The episodes are usually filmed about six^[2] to eight weeks in advance of broadcast. (Page 147 only mentions six weeks ) During the winter period, filming can take place up to twelve weeks in advance, due to less daylight for outdoor filming sessions.^[3] (Page 147)

• The postal district in EastEnders was entirely fictional up to that point, as London East postal districts stopped at E18 at that time. (Alternative source reference found) The show's creators opted for E20 instead of E19 as it was thought to sound better. (Alternative source reference found) In September 2011 the postal code for Albert Square was revealed in an episode as E20 6PQ. (Page: Book published in 2005 so cannot be a reference.)

• The exterior set for the fictional Albert Square is located in the permanent backlot of the BBC Elstree Centre, Borehamwood, Hertfordshire, at 51°39′32″N 0°16′40″W / 51.65889°N 0.27778°W / 51.65889; -0.27778, and is outdoors and open to the weather. (source) The EastEnders lot was designed by Keith Harris, who was a senior designer within the production team together with supervising art directors Peter Findley and Gina Parr.^[5] (Alternative reference found)

References written with page numbers

A paragraph strike means the references has been added to the designated article.

The Inside Story

• EastEnders is built around the idea of relationships and strong families, with each character having a place in the community. This theme encompasses the whole Square, making the entire community a family of sorts, prey to upsets and conflict, but pulling together in times of trouble. Co-creator Tony Holland was from a large East End family, and such families have typified EastEnders.^[6] (Page 49)
• The first central family was the combination of the
  Fowler family, consisting of Pauline Fowler, her husband Arthur Fowler, and teenage children Mark Fowler and Michelle Fowler and the Beale family, consisting of Pete Beale (Pauline's twin brother), his wife Kathy Beale and their teenage son Ian Beale. Pauline and Pete's mother was the domineering Lou Beale, who lived with Pauline and her family. Holland drew on the names of his own family for the characters.^[7]
  (Page 51-56)
• The target launch date was originally January 1985.[8] (Page 24) Smith and Holland had eleven months in which to write, cast and shoot the whole thing. However, in February 1984, they did not even have a title or a place to film. Both Smith and Holland were unhappy about the January 1985 launch date, favouring November or even September 1984 when seasonal audiences would be higher, but the BBC stayed firm, and Smith and Holland had to concede that, with the massive task of getting the Elstree Studios operational, January was the most realistic date. However, this was later to be changed to February.^[8](Page 24)
• The launch was delayed until February 1985^[9](Page 154)
• After they decided on the filming location of BBC Elstree Studios in Hertfordshire).^[10] (Page 40) Smith and Holland set about creating the twenty-three characters needed, in just fourteen days.^[11] (Page 164) They took a holiday in Playa de los Pocillos, Lanzarote, and started to create the characters.^[12] (Page 48) Holland created the Beale and Fowler family, drawing on his own background. His mother, Ethel Holland, was one of four sisters raised in Walthamstow. Her eldest sister, Lou, had married a man named Albert Beale and had two children, named Peter and Pauline.^[6] (Page 49) These family members were the basis for Lou Beale, Pete Beale and Pauline Fowler. Holland also created Pauline's unemployed husband Arthur Fowler, their children Mark Fowler and Michelle Fowler, Pete's wife Kathy Beale and their son Ian Beale.^[7] (Page 51-56) Smith used her personal memories of East End residents she met when researching Victorian squares.^[13] (Page 15) Ethel Skinner was based on an old woman she met in a pub, with ill-fitting false teeth, and a "face to rival a neon sign", holding a Yorkshire Terrier in one hand and a pint of Guinness in the other.^[14](Page 52)
• The Beales are the show's longest running family, having been in EastEnders since it began in 1985.^{[citation needed]} (Needs an alternative reference as book was written in 1987) Key people involved in the production of EastEnders have stressed how important the idea of strong families is to the programme.^[6] (Page 49)
• The drains around the set are real so rainwater can naturally flow from the streets.
  Magda Czajkowski. A feature storyline in 1987 was when young, single mother Mary Smith
  prostituted herself (Page 199)'