The Year Was… 1985

INTRODUCTION

The country was changing: the miners of the country were still on strike – reacting to Margaret’s Thatcherism with protests and violence. Vodafone launched in the UK. Laura Ashley died after a fall at her daughter’s home. Keira Knightley, Wayne Rooney, Leona Lewis and Harry Judd hit maternity wards. And Grace Brothers’ Department Store closed it’s doors to the public for the last time after ten seasons on BBC One.

Everybody with a television set heard EastEnders literally kick it’s way onto BBC One on 19th February 1985. The show had been teased in the press for a while, but any doubt that the BBC’s new flagship show by pioneers Tony Holland and Julia Smith was going to be a re-run of perpetual dramedy Coronation Street was soon cast out of the window, along with a brick thrown by Nick Cotton. By the end of that first episode, there’d been a brawl, a shock pregnancy, a rowing family and an attempted murder! Talk about starting the ground running!

EVENTS

The Beale-Fowler Clan
Right from the get-go, the Fowlers were the centre of everything on Albert Square! There was matriarch Lou, who ruled from her armchair, a dragon in every sense of the word. Her daughter Pauline and her husband Arthur found themselves expecting a new arrival in their forties, despite Lou’s adamance that it was stupid. Their children weren’t having an easy time of it either – within months teenager Michelle was pregnant by a mystery man and older brother Mark was already flitting into dodgy territory by hanging around with Nick Cotton.

On the other side of Pauline’s coin, her twin brother Pete seemed to have it all: the perfect wife in Kathy, a well-respected fruit and veg stall at the heart of the community and a son, Ian who was more interested in Doctor Who and arcade games than girls. For now. Yes, everything was quite rosy for Pete… until Nick Cotton glanced at some surgery files and cottoned on to the fact that Kathy had given birth at 14 and promptly blackmailed her for it!

Nasty Nick
There was never any hope for Nick Cotton. Try as his mother Dot did, there was nothing saintly about her boy. Nick was already a drug dealer, petty thief, pimp and downright bully from the word go, spouting racist language at the Osman and Jeffery clans and not having pleasant words for anyone really. He was arrested for the murder of Reg Cox, whose body had been found in the opening episode.

But he got away with that on insufficient evidence and returned to the Square to blackmail Kathy. However, Pete gathered the Walford equivalent of the Masters of the Universe together and they ran Nick out of town. But you know what they say about bad pennies…

The Watts Family
Was there ever a couple so suited and yet incompatible at the same time as Den and Angie Watts? Once upon a time, after adopting little Princess Sharon, they had been happy but, dodgy dealings on Den’s part, enough alcohol to pickle a gherkin factory in Ange and marital affairs galore between the two and you start to realise why Sharon Watts turned out the way she did! Never mind the fact that her dad Den was also the father of her best friend Michelle’s surprise baby bump!

Ali and Sue
Sue and Ali Osman seemed like a normal couple: she ran the café like clockwork, while he used his family connections to run a cab firm. Add little Hassan, and the family was complete – apart from the usual Osman clan disaster as Mehmet and his wife Guizin also brought their trouble to town. By four months into the show’s run, the normal, average couple found themselves dead centre of the first big controversial plot: Hassan died in his sleep, leaving his parents unable to cope. Sue went into a breakdown, not able to cry until Doctor Legg placed new-born Vicki in her arms weeks later. Ali threw his all in with his brother Mehmet’s poker games, rapidly losing all their money in the process. They would never recover.

Keep Doin’ It for the Kids
Not much could rattle the bond between best friends Michelle and Sharon (she would remain in the dark about Vicki’s dad for a while…), but Kelvin Carpenter became the centre of their world – until Kelvin himself decided that neither girl was worth the hassle and settled down to school work instead.

Ian, always Sharon’s knight in white, was more interested in his knitwear company (he started young that one) and then his true calling: cooking. Pete disapproved of that one, leaving Lou to step in and tell Ian he could do what he wanted. Michelle fell into the will-they-won’t-they trope with Lofty Holloway, who helped her hide the identity of Vicki’s dad. Sharon stayed the constant referee to her parent’s volatility, until Simon Wicks came along and she formed a cunning plan…

Mary the Punk
Mary Smith was the Square’s first ‘lost girl’, running from family and a single mum to boot. She moved into Reg Cox’s old flat and promptly made every mistake she possibly could as she did everything to raise money for baby Annie: she was arrested for shoplifting, exploited by Nick and almost lured into prostitution and got into trouble with the social for leaving Annie home alone. She ended the year on a relative high – working as a stripper. A job, after all, was a job.

The Other Stuff
Andy O’Brien and Debbie Wilkins, so in love with each other they spent most of their time arguing, moved into the Square. Dot arrived, complaining of a migraine. Ian began his love of cooking and gets the first Julia’s Theme. Saeed and Naima go through it as he visits a lady of the night. Angie brings drag queens into the Vic, which has hilarious results and Sharon, Michelle and Ian rent a filthy video…

THE ORIGINAL CAST

ARRIVALS

DEPARTURES

RETURNS