First Billie Piper leaves Doctor Who, and now Wendy Richard is hanging up Pauline Fowler’s well-worn cardigan to leave EastEnders after 21 years of sticking dirty laundry through the Albert Square driers. What is up with the world?
Well stone me. Who would have thought we’d have seen this day? Pauline is soap royalty, the classic miserable mother-in law/mother/wife figure who has frowed at everything from illegitmate children via the local publican, HIV, nervous breakdowns, allotment comedy and erm… the collapse of the Dragon Slide (because we all remember that one, don’t we?)
What amazes me about this departure is the amount of media exposure the story has received. Even to the extent that hacks like little old me get summoned to the studios of BBC News 24 to pass my ever observant commentary on these events. (For those interested, the studio is tiny and made of quite fragile perspex. Nice coffee, though…).
Is Pauline such a legendary character? It seems so, and as one of the few originals left in the show (the other being Ian Beale - Dot sort of counts, but she did have time away, so defaults at the final fence), you can bet producers have tried to cling onto this link to the past for dear life. Corrie sending Mike Baldwin go to the great knicker factory in the sky is one thing, but could you ever imagine ITV letting Bill Roach get past the security desk at Granada when he wants to retire? Not. On. Your. Life.
But soaps move on. They are organic beasts that must ebb and flow with the sea of change, a barometer of the broadcasting climate from decade to decade. We’ll miss Pauline, but life, and the show, must go on.
Will they kill her off? I’m certainly hoping so. How boring to have Pauline just getting on a plane to go and live happily ever after with Michelle and Betty the dog on Christmas Day. Be brave. Let’s have some horrible gardening accident at Arfer’s allotment. Or a hand appearing from beneath a fallen pile of apples from the fruit and veg stall, causing Martin, overcome with guilt, to stay in Albert Square and take over his mum’s shift at the laundrette. Perhaps it’s time to find out what happens when Cairn terriers go bad!
But whichever way the wind blows on Christmas Day, I for one will be shedding a small tear as a soap legend, a TV icon (Miss Brahms was an early crush) walks (well, we hope she’ll be walking) away from a spiritual home that has kept her frowning and shouting for 22 years.
Just what would Lou Beale have to say?
