The meaning of EastEnders

Oh, come on, int it. Don’t get on your igh orse, You know what I’m talking
about. I’m talking about Albert Square. I’m talking about the Mitchell
brothers, I’m talking about Peggy, I’m talking about Frank Butcher oughtn’t
to been driving, the silly old fool, I’m talking dahn the Vic (mine’s a
rum’n'black), I’m talking Tiff no better than what she oughter, talking Ian
Beale, Chelsea, Zainab, the Mitchell sisters now Grant and Phil is gone.
Talking young Tiff, Fat Boy, Danny, Dot Cotton, the Karims (Shireen, Sohail,
Ashraf, Sufia) and the Osmans (Ali, Sue, Mehmet, Guizin and Little Ali and
all them other Osmans), Ernie Mears and Alan Grout, Spotty and Reg and Uncle
and Dr Samuels and Sergeant Jimmy. Doof doof. Doof doof!

And Dirty Den.

“Cor, stinks in ere, dunnit?” Den Watts. Dirty Den.

That’s how it all began, a quarter of a century ago. Boot kicks in a door,
basement flat int it, bit iffy, bit on the nose, what you got’s a stiff, int
it, bleedin Reg, narmean?, Reg Cox, only brown bread in the, first episode
and he’s dead, dead dead, tosser, Reg, well moody, cantankerous git, except
…

Except … he’s not dead, is he, doc? “No. We’re going to need some space.”
DOOF doof doof …

No. There weren’t (best of my recollection) doof doofs in them days. Not yet.
Not doof doofs. Simon May’s original theme tune ? played over a murky
pre-CGI Thames with a year still to run before London City airport ?
features the famous RotoToms, first quietly in the background, then playing
the real, yer actual, doof doof figure linking the end of an inexplicable
sub-Chas & Dave honky-tonk middle eight to the recap of the original
theme (whose words, it seems, are “Anyone can fall in love”.
Lord). But they’re still not the doof doofs, a dramatic as much as a musical
gesture and the defining feature of the series. Say “EastEnders”
to anyone ? any sentient being with a telly, at any rate ? and they’ll reply “Doof
doof.”

They’ll probably get it wrong, too.

“Bit off-thread but I’m desperate!” wrote BeatNick on the Digital
Spy forum recently; “I’m a sub writing a headline and I need to know
how many doof-doofs there are at the end of each episode of EastEnders! I’ve
tried counting them off YouTube but I can’t be sure I’m right! I think it’s
eight or nine. Can anyone help?”

Well of course they could help. “Eight,” they declared. This was,
after all, a fan site. These people knew. Britain’s most
instantly-recognised piece of music after God Save the Queen, int it?

And they got it wrong. There are nine doof doofs. I transcribed them for you
myself and if you don’t believe me I’d like to point out that the URL for
the Bournemouth Echo’s recent story on the show’s silver jubilee is http://www.
bournemouthecho.co.uk/news/4868687.25_years_of_doof__doof__doof__doof__doof__doof__doof_doof_doof_/,
which, I think, settles the argument for good. (I wonder whether it was the
same sub who had second thoughts, or a different sub with a musical
training.)

***

Reg Cox wasn’t dead. He died in the next episode. Galling, perhaps, for
Johnnie Clayton, the actor who played him, but scene-setting for what would
follow. EastEnders began as it meant to go on. These weren’t the
thigh-slapping, Knees-up-Mother-Brown, apples-and-pears mockney
whelk-gobblers of popular entertainment. They owed more to Liza of Lambeth
than “The Lambeth Walk”. Although they were entirely fictive in
their endless intersecting and interdependence, although the idea of this “community”
was, and remains, an artful dramatic device which makes no attempt to
conceal itself from the viewers, their concerns and the
infinitely-extendible show itself harked back to a dramatic tradition far
older than soaps or melodramas.

In its endless blurring between comedy and tragedy, as well as its setting,
firmly among the working class, EastEnders lies in a line of descent
directly from the mediaeval tradition of the miracle and mystery plays: the
drama of ordinary people caught up in great events. The guildsmen and
navvies of the mystery plays don’t bother about matters of patristics or
moral theology; they are more interested in slagging off each others’ work,
trying to find their tools, boasting about their own skills, nattering and
arseing about. So, too, the denizens of Albert Square respond to murder,
incest, recession, bankruptcy, homosexuality, multiculturalism and all the
anguished shibboleths of our times.

The urge to “relevance” is a terrible curse upon any script editor
but EastEnders has pulled it off, time and again, without either preaching
to the audience or patronising its own characters. Perhaps that’s because
the main character in the series is the place itself, Albert Square, a sort
of malign, cackling but gemütlich exercise in the kind of psychogeography
Peter Ackroyd and Iain Sinclair espouse, though on a grander scale. Move
into the Square and the Square gets in amongst you and stirs you up with a
long pole.

But other soaps have tried the neighbourhood trick and (at least as drama)
fail dreadfully. Coronation Street seems oddly detached from any kind of
reality, an extended exercise in high camp in which gurning caricatures plod
on, do their turn, and plod off again with a sort of knowing wink to the
viewers as they go. Neighbours is disengaged from everything, even the
neighbourhood; nothing there is ever really at stake, everyone is
vouched-for nice-n-friendly, and there is no real jeopardy. The Archers is
simply unspeakable, its cosiness as soft and comfy as a pair of
nicely-padded incontinence pants, and even its signature tune can throw you
into a horrible state of rural despair so that, after a bit, you stop
turning the car radio on in case it’s The Archers (and it always is). Nobody
can hear the news that a cast member has died ? whether in the show or in
real life ? without doing a tiny mental jig of relief. Brookside may have
been as grittily engaged with social commentary ? lesbian kissing! Incest!
Heroin! ? as EastEnders, but it was the grit in the sandal rather than the
grit in the oyster.

And now is not the time to talk about Crossroads. It is never the time to talk
about Crossroads. Watching Crossroads was like being in a motorway lavatory
when the paper has run out: a combination of anger, frustration,
self-loathing and a profound, almost stupefying sadness.

EastEnders is different. Firstly, it pulls off (and has been doing so since
the beginning) an astonishing trick: it gives the impression that the
characters are bigger than the show. It’s as if they’re only in a TV series
by accident, or intermittently. Take the cameras away from any other soap
and the show’s over. The people of Ambridge, Coronation Street or Ramsay
Street clearly only exist in order to be on TV. EastEnders’ characters seem
to keep on going between episodes, although everything possible is done to
avoid giving that impression, not least, the doof doofs. The cliffhanger
which prompts an episode’s doof doof ? originally an insider shorthand on
the show, which somehow leaked out into the public domain ? is taken up
without a millisecond’s break at the beginning of the next. But the doof
doofs themselves are an extraordinarily device.

On the surface of it, they’re the antithesis of postmodern irony. Here’s the
diegesis ? the world-within-the-show ? and we, the viewers, aren’t invited
to step out of it for even a moment. Showtime stops with the doof doof and
resumes again after the opening titles (with the new, astonishingly blue,
possibly digitally-enhanced Thames) of the next. But at the same time the
doof doof is postmodernism epitomised (and you could argue that it’s a special
category of sign, temporarily halting the process of what Derrida called “différance”
on a grander scale. You could. But let’s not). “What you have just seen,”
the doof doof says, “is a fictional construct, done by actors. And
what’s more, we’re not just going to have a cliffhanger, we’re going to have
a special that-was-a-cliffhanger signpost.” We may all have inner
soundtracks to our daily lives but damn few of us, I bet, have doof doofs.
When would we have them? Life doesn’t pause for the cliffhanger. In real
life, there is no cliffhang. It’s just oops, stop, can’t, over, down, dead.
We don’t even get to windmill our legs for a moment. Doof doofs? In real
life there just isn’t the time. The EastEnders doof doof is a purely
theatrical device. It’s like the girl with the legs doing the placard at a
wrestling match. It’s like the boy with the legs doing the scene-card in the
old Globe Theatre. It’s like the Chorus coming on in Henry V to tell us what
we should be imagining. Watching the EastEnders weekend omnibus edition,
without the doof doofs, was always oddly dispiriting. Something lacking.
Eventually I gave up but what was lacking, of course, was that
theatricality.

Perhaps the original doof doof was the ebony stick the old Comédie Française
stage manager used to rap three times to mark the beginning of the play.
EastEnders raps at the end; and so those RotoToms become more of a Greek
chorus, commenting on the action. “Here’s a terrible thing,” they
say; “Here’s a turn-up for the books; here’s a dilemma; here’s a
bugger: how’ll they get out of this one, eh? Int it? Int it? Narmean?”
And we respond instinctively. We nod sagely. We creak out of our chairs. “Int
it?” we murmur to each other, going to put the kettle on. “Narmean?”
“Int it.”

If the doof doof is a sort of chorus, it’s appropriate, because the overriding
plot device in EastEnders ? and perhaps another reason for its characters’
seeming persistence outside the broadcast episodes ? is what Aristotle
identified as the most successful structure of classical Athenian tragedy.
The Greek tragedies, too, were curiously given to relevance, and you can
read the vast sweep of Aeschylus’s prototypical (and only surviving)
trilogy, the Oresteia, as an extended argument about an impersonal,
capricious life at the mercy of the gods versus a rational human justice.
Tragedy, though one of the greatest of arts, tends only to spring up when
societies are threatened with great change. In the 5th century BC, Athens
was under military and economic threat. In the 16th century, England was
yoked under religious controversy and intolerance, monarchical despotism,
overseas conflict and adventurism, and the rise of the new merchant classes;
nothing was safe or to be counted upon. And again in the 19th century, in
northern Europe, a new financial, moral and social order was growing without
restraint. These times gave us Sophocles and Euripides, Shakespeare and
Marlowe, Ibsen and Chekhov.

Now we have telly.

But the underlying structure remains spookily the same. Aristotle, in his
Poetics, noted down what he saw as as the best structure to engage audiences
in the action of a tragedy. The hero had to be someone we could identify
with: not too great or too low. He had to have some sort of hubris ? a flaw
or failing or even just a sort of misunderstanding about his abilities or
his place in the scheme of things. This hubris led him to make a mistake,
the hamartia, which originally meant, simply, missing the target. As a
result, what he (and we) thought was a run of good luck turned out
(peripeteia) to actually be carrying him to destruction. Eventually we, and
he, recognise (anagnorisis) things for what they really are, and fate
(nemesis) brings him down. The result is katharsis ? either a “purging”
or, if you prefer, a “rebalancing” of the world. Watch EastEnders
through Aristotle’s eye and it’s unmissable. And anything that’s been a
recipe for well-structured, audience-engaging drama for over 2,500 years has
got to have something.

The thing that Aristotle didn’t quite say was that, in a tragedy, the downfall
seems both inexorable and disproportionate. “But … but … did he
really have to … ” DOOF doof doof.

And that, too, is the secret of the doof doofs. Oh blimey NOW there’s going to
be … but what? What is there going to be? Not necessarily, not by any
means always, bad, but big. Big. One of the best ? perhaps the best ? would
have been, in lesser hands than the EastEnders’ team’s, been a recipe for
sentimentality. But not here:

ZOE: You ain’t my mother.

(PAUSE)

KAT: Yes I am.

Doof doof.

It’s one among many, of course. Canvas the viewers and everyone’s got their
favourite.

The firemen going into the Slaters’ house to save Trev and the whole house
goes up, leaving Sharon weeping in the street. The day Robbie Jackson
leaves. Phil and Grant Mitchell leaping out of the car to save their mother
from thugs. “I’ve done something terrible, Dad … ” (DOOF doof
doof). Tiffany’s death. Melanie walking out on Ian. Dot and Ethel’s deathbed
hug. Grant’s return. And, of course, the evening when Alfie spent half an
hour running round London looking for a condom and by the time he got back
Kat had passed out into a drunken slumber …

Some of them Aeschylus would have written. Some of them he’d have died rather
than. But all grew from the interaction of wider fates upon flawed and
personal lives.

***

We all have our moments. For me, it was that golden period when Peggy was
still not entirely disenchanted with the Vic (“Get OUT of my PUB!”),
Phil was blootered 24/7 but in glorious slurred lurching denial, and Grant
in full truculent (“I’ll SORT it, oKAY?”) geezer mode. But then
… doof doof.

Some say that it was never the same after Dirty Den went. Some lament Frank
Butcher’s death in France (throat cancer). Viewers pass through just as
residents of Albert Square pass through. But EastEnders keeps going.
Personally, I’d give it top marks just for introducing a new and universally
appropriate greeting whenever one resident opens the front door to another: “What
YOU want?” Bravo, and to hell with limp-wristed continental courtesies.
EastEnders is the king of soaps. Long may it reign. And if you don’t agree,
you know where you can stick it …

Doof doof.

A special live anniversary episode of EastEnders airs on Friday 19 February
on BBC One

A guide to Albert Square’s best characters

Ethel Skinner – Gretchen Franklin

Second of the original 23 characters to be conceived by the show’s inventors
Tony Holland and Julia Smith, Ethel quickly became a well-loved character.
Her two enduring relationships were with Dot Cotton and Willy, her pet pug.
In 2000 Ethel became seriously ill and in one of the show’s most
controversial storylines asked Dot to help her die; her funeral was accorded
the rare honour of an alternative to the signature ending drums (wartime
orchestral music was played instead). In May 2005 Franklin was to be
presented with the Lifetime Soap Achievement Award at the British Soap
Awards but died in July, four days after her 94th birthday.

“Nasty” Nick Cotton – John Altman

Nick has enraged audiences since 1985 with his continual and calculated
cruelty towards his God-fearing mother Dot. (The debut episode of EastEnders
opens with the discovery of Reg Cox’s body, who Nick has murdered.) In his
time Nick has committed murder twice, been addicted to heroin, tried to
poison his mother and performed countless other transgressions. Frequently
named as one of soap’s best villains, Cotton’s reputation has meant that
Altman has never been short of pantomime roles.

Tiffany Mitchell – Martine McCutcheon

The gutsy barmaid at the Queen Vic for three years, “Tiff” was
Bianca’s BF, and spent most of her time torn between Grant Mitchell (who
cheated on her with her mother) and Tony Hills (who slept with her brother).
Her tragic end ? she was hit by a car while trying to rescue her daughter
Courtney from Grant ? was witnessed by over 20 million viewers. Not long
afterwards McCutcheon upgraded Ross Kemp for Hugh Grant in the movie Love,
Actually, and, like any self-respecting celeb, now calls herself an author:
The Mistress was published last November.

Frank Butcher – Mike Reid

Former stuntman and stand-up comedian Reid became Frank in 1987, reappearing
off and on until 2005. Frank was a charming but selfish man, and often
scarpered from Walford leaving his loved ones to pick up the pieces. Caught
between the two matriarchs of the square, Pat Butcher (Pam St Clement) and
Peggy Mitchell (Barbara Windsor), his affair with Pat led to one of the most
comedic love scenes Walford has ever seen when he turned up on her doorstep,
naked save for a comedy twirling bowtie. After leaving the soap in 2005 Reid
appeared in The Bill, filmed the reality show The Baron, as well as the
feature film Jack Says, which he completed four days before his death in
July 2007.

Simon “Wicksy” Wicks – Nick Berry

Dreamy-looking Wicksy (all quiff and doe eyes) moved to Walford in 1985 in
search of his father, Pete Beale, and stayed five years. After dating
Sharon, he fell for Cindy Williams (Michelle Collins), the soon-to-be wife
of his best mate Ian Beale. The resulting feud would eventually force both
Wicksy and Cindy to leave the Square. Berry has since appeared in Heartbeat
for eight years, as well as starring in the self-written, produced and
directed BBC1 series Harbour Lights.

Ian Beale – Adam Woodyatt

The only character to have been in the show continuously since its first
episode, Ian was just a teenager when he first appeared on screen. Reluctant
to follow his father Pete Beale into the fruit and veg trade, Ian has been
the victim of his own ambition for most of his adult life. A weasel and a
sneak, Ian has attracted the approbation of many co-characters, including
his ex-wife Cindy (one of four spouses he’s had in his time), who tried to
murder him. Woodyatt, a genuine East Ender in real life, is also an
accomplished photographer and avid Trekkie.

George “Lofty” Holloway – Tom Watt

Chivalrous but nerdy, Lofty appeared in the show between 1985-1988, offering
to marry the newly-pregnant Michelle Fowler (the dad was Den). However
theirs was not a marriage of true minds, and when Michelle (Susan Tully)
aborted the baby he had wished for, Lofty was a broken man. Watt left
EastEnders for a successful second career as a sports journalist, presenting
on radio and television; he also ghost-wrote the fastest-selling
autobiography of all time, David Beckham’s My Side.

Sharon Watts – Letitia Dean

Blonde, husky-voiced barmaid Sharon has been in and out of the Square from
1985 until 2006. The daughter of Den and Angie, Sharon’s love life has been
predictably ill-fated. She married Grant Mitchell only to have an affair
with his brother Phil; later she turned her charms on her own brother (by
adoption) Dennis, whom she also married. After his death, Dean waltzed onto
the 5th series of Strictly Come Dancing, followed by stage appearances in
High School Musical and Calendar Girls.

Dennis “Dirty Den” Watts – Leslie Grantham

Originally the landlord of the Queen Vic, Dirty Den first made an appearance
in Walford in 1985 before disappearing under suspicious circumstances in
1989 ? only to rise like Lazarus in 2003. His spectacularly bad marriage to
Angie (Anita Dobson) culminated in the Christmas Day 1986 episode, recently
voted one of the soap’s most popular, in which Den served his alcoholic
spouse divorce papers. Grantham himself has had a dramatic personal life,
including time in prison and an online sex scandal.

Barry Evans – Shawn Williamson

For 10 years, between 1994 to 2004, Barry, a second-hand car dealer, was a
cuckolded buffoon. Incredibly, his marriage to Natalie Price was seen by
20.89 million viewers in the millennium eve special, and broadcast to
revelers on huge screens in Trafalgar Square; his lowest point was a fall
off a cliff which lead to his ultimate demise at the hands of Janine.
Williamson went on to play himself in Extra, a man even referred to by his
agent as ‘Barry from EastEnders’. Miranda Porter

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