The Year Was… 1991

INTRODUCTION

The Gulf War raged and Britain joined the fight. Queen Elizabeth II addressed the US Congress. Nirvana released ground-breaking album Nevermind. Silence of the Lambs was adapted for the big screen with Sir Anthony Hopkins, Kevin Costner was Robin Hood, Arnie, after promising, ‘came back’ to save the world from Judgement Day and the world lost a soap as after 14 years, Dallas closed Southfork.

In Walford, dangerous passions would loom, a murder most heinous would have residents worrying that a killer was amongst them, and choices were made that would change lives forever, starting with a secret that was one of the best-received storylines in British soap history, and for EastEnders, one of it’s most effective pieces of issue-led drama.

EVENTS

Mark’s Secret
Mark’s return the Square the year before had been joyous news for mum Pauline. In fact, she was so excited that she didn’t notice how sullen and miserable he had become. She failed to notice the leaflets lying around or how anxious he was when he cut himself. So Mark was a ticking time bomb in 1991 as he spent a year preparing to tell his parents that he was HIV-Positive.

**Pauline** was delighted to have **Mark** back home…

He confided in Diane that he had come into contact with the virus after a relationship with a woman named Gill in Newcastle. She turned up in May, determined to reconnect with Mark, but soon disappeared when she spotted Diane and Mark together. Their friendship never went beyond a kiss though and Diane eventually convinced him to go for counselling where he could pour his heart out.

Feeling unable to tell his parents, Mark was shamed into doing so when friend Joe, in the same boat as Mark, started working in Ian’s catering kitchens. Ian, being woefully misinformed, as most of Britain was on the subject at the time, sacked Joe and sterilised the whole place from top to bottom.

**Joe** tells an angry **Mark** that he has been fired by **Ian**

After a brief fling with and encouragement from new resident Rachel, Mark bravely told his parents on Boxing Day. Arthur was hostile, Pauline terrified and Mark was looking at a very difficult 1992.

Murder in the Square!
Eddie Royle had rubbed some people up the wrong way. Not the most likeable of landlords, he struggled to find his place in the community. But not even Eddie deserved his fate: his body was discovered early one morning, stabbed in the middle of the Square.

Early one morning, **Eddie** was found dead…

The police soon pointed the finger of suspicion onto Grant, who had almost killed Eddie in a fight over Sharon. Then Clyde was in the frame after it transpired that not only had he found the body, but he also had been holding the bloody knife at the time.

**Eddie** and **Grant** had recently argued over **Sharon**

Panicking and not thinking clearly, Clyde decided that life on the run with Michelle Fowler and their children would be preferable to just telling the innocent truth and they went dashing to Portsmouth to escape on the ferry. They were picked up easily enough and returned to Walford. Luckily by then Mark’s friend Joe, fired by Ian that very day, had come forward to say he had seen Nick Cotton around the area at the time of the murder whilst leaving the Square. That was enough for Dot who coerced the truth out of her strung-out son, leaving Clyde off the hook. The only question left to answer after that was of vital importance: who would take over the Queen Vic?

**Clyde** was anxious while the police investigated

Race to Gretna Green
Sam and Ricky were young, in love and attractive, but not exactly blessed in the brains department, with one GCSE between them! They also had overbearing parents and unbearable siblings to boot, so Ricky decided the best thing to do was to propose to the prettiest Mitchell on her 16th birthday.

Love’s young dream – **Ricky** and **Sam**

Mum Peggy was horrified and attempted to pull them apart, which of course pushed them together. The pair started sneaking about in hotels and a clapped out ‘nookie-van’ before planning to elope to Gretna Green.

**Pat** and **Frank** arrive in time to see the couple up the aisle

This was a thoroughly Ricky-plan however: he failed to secure the wedding licence or book the registry office and left a map to their destination in the Arches. Before you knew it, the race was on with the Mitchells on one side and the Butchers on the other, speeding up the length of England to stop the ceremony. Some catty misdirection caused the Mitchells to lose and Frank and Pat arrived in time to see Ricky and Sam become Mr. and Mrs. Butcher. Of course, unable to afford their own place and realising she would have to take responsibility was way too much for Sam, who started to wonder whether she’d made the right move or not.

Celestine and Etta’s Choice
Etta was doing well in her teaching position and her promotion irked family head, control freak Celestine. After a pregnancy scare left her scared of passing sickle-cell disease down to another child (it had nearly killed Lloyd the summer before), Etta prepared herself for sterilisation but hit a snag when she discovered she was already pregnant. Etta didn’t want to risk the pregnancy, but Celestine was a religious man. When they found out the baby would have a double dose of the sickle-cell gene, even he agreed to end the pregnancy.

**Celestine** and **Etta** preferred a quiet life…

This deeply affected their relationship, with Celestine drinking and almost cheating and ensuring his children hated him and the path to reconciliation would be a slow one…

Michelle and Clyde
Michelle realised what most of Walford had been saying for years and decided she must start acting like a grown-up. She moved out of the family home into No. 55, where new landlord Rachel Kominski, already close with brother Mark, needed lodgers to help pay the mortgage. Rachel was a lecturer who read and didn’t own a television and this rebelliousness, such as it was, rubbed off on Michelle, who suddenly began spending so much time with Rachel that people began to whisper that Michelle had taken leave of men altogether. Finally, after Sharon called Rachel ‘a condescending bitch’ in classic schoolgirl behaviour, Michelle halted the rumours by bedding budding boxing success Clyde Tavernier.

**Rachel** and **Michelle**‘s friendship led to rumours…

Disa on the Doorstep
The baby shaped Jasmine ‘present’ that Disa O’Brien left on the doorstep complicated things for everyone in 1991. She reappeared and we soon established the horrifying truth when her uncle Ken arrived to bring Disa and baby home to her mother. It turned out that her uncle, in truth her abusive stepfather, was also the baby’s father and Disa had fled home when no one believed her. With Diane and Dot’s help she had Ken arrested. Disa’s mother eventually believed her own child enough to collect her wayward daughter and granddaughter and Disa left the Square for good.

**Dot** helps **Disa** as she struggles …

‘Till Death Do Us Part
Sharon was so traumatised after the loss of her parents and the Vic that she was starting to act a bit crazy. For some reason, Grant’s screaming in his sleep appealed to her. When she saw him beat up Eddie, she didn’t see violence, she saw chivalry. And when he confessed he was a psychopath who suffered from PTSD after killing a defenceless teenager in the Falklands War, she saw a hero. Grant, knowing how to please his lady, secured the tenancy of the Queen Vic and the pair married on Boxing Day, for better or for worse. And things would get a great deal worse…

**Grant**, besotted with **Sharon**, was persistent

Nick: Tough Love
Dot gave Nick his marching orders when he turned up strung-out on heroin in June, desperate to once again fleece his ma. After all, he had tried to kill her the year before! But when Charlie, Nick’s dad and Dot’s bigamist husband died in a car accident on the M25, Dot decided she must help her own son and for a while, sheltered him in the house, buying his gear for him and even asking Pete to bar up the bedroom windows and barricade Nick in his bedroom to wean him off.

This wasn’t enough as Nick later proved: desperate to score he shimmied down the drain pipe thanks to Pete’s dodgy woodwork and promptly stabbed Eddie Royle in the Square gardens.

The Other Stuff
Clyde gets in the boxing ring. Arthur gets the contract to maintain the upkeep of the Square. Pat and Frank hit a crisis and Pat starts to frequent several dodgy pick-up bars. Fake fivers end up passed around the Square, courtesy of Phil and Grant…