Pauline Fowler

Pauline Fowler

Pauline Fowler is a fictional character from the BBC One soap opera EastEnders. She was played by actress Wendy Richard between the first episode on 19 February 1985 and 25 December 2006. She is the second-longest-running original character, surpassed only by her nephew, Ian Beale.

About Pauline Fowler in brief

Summary Pauline FowlerPauline Fowler is a fictional character from the BBC One soap opera EastEnders. She was played by actress Wendy Richard between the first episode on 19 February 1985 and 25 December 2006. She is the second-longest-running original character, surpassed only by her nephew, Ian Beale. Her storylines focus on drudgery, money worries and family troubles. Pauline was a staple in the UK press during her time in the serial, representative of the symbiosis between Britain’s soaps and tabloid newspapers. Richard announced Pauline’s retirement from the serial in July 2006, and the character was killed off in a murder storyline, with Richard making her final appearance on 25 December2006. She has been described as a \”legend\” and a television icon, but was also voted the 35th \”most annoying person of 2006\”. The character is well-known even outside of the show’s viewer-base, and away from the on-screen serial, Pauline has been the subject of television documentaries, behind-the-scenes books, tie-in novels, and comedy sketch shows. Her original character outline as written by Smith and Holland appears in an abridged form in their book, East enders: The Inside Story. The character was created by scriptwriter Tony Holland and producer Julia Smith as one of Eastenders’ original characters. She made her debut in the soap’s first episode in February 1985, and remained for twenty-one years and ten months, making her the second longest-serving original character in the show.

She’s a member of the Beale family, and is at first portrayed as a loving, doting, very family-oriented mother. In later years, however, she becomes a more stoic, opinionated battle-axe who alienates her relatives through overbearing interference. A famous episode in 1986, which includes Pauline discovering that Den is the father of Michelle’s baby, drew over 30 million viewers, and was listed at number 36 in The Times’ 1998 list of \”Top 100 cult moments in Film\”. She is used for comedic purposes in scenes with her launderette colleague, Dot Cotton, and scriptwriters included many feuds in her narrative, most notably with her daughter-in-law, Sonia Fowler, and Den Watts, a family friend who got her daughter, Michelle Fowler, pregnant at 16. She doesn’t trust skinny people, even though she’s very fond of her twin, Pete. She’s very conventional and the salt of the earth, someone you can get your arms round and the conventional salt round. A warm, practical, unsophisticated woman: you stand by your man, do your duty, fight for your kids and have a roast for Sunday dinner … She’s also pregnant . She actually remembers her dad saying \”Two things we don’t discuss in this house are religion and politics\”. She also remembers her father smoked a pipe, and wishes her husband did too.