Eastenders is never given the credit it deserves for typecasting people into roles in which no acting is ever required. Time and time again the "stars" leave and try to start a career in music, acting or presenting only to return years later. The ones who know their place, like Dot Cotton, stay on and save themselves the humiliation of having to come back. Killing characters off doesn't make any difference since the acting is so bad, that nobody is ever sure whether or not the character is actually supposed to be dead.
Most of the "actors" are exactly the same in real life as their screen characters. It's no wonder that the public, who are on the whole, an extremely ignorant rabble, get confused as life imitates art. Well, not art, obviously. Life imitates panto.
Eastenders has had some memorable storylines over the years, but ratings have been dropping recently and BBC bosses are hoping to reverse this by bringing back one of the show's most bald characters. Bringing back "dead" characters has been tried before, after Dirty Den (played by John Leslie) returned after supposedly been knocked into a canal by a man carrying some flowers. However, the character was not quite like we remembered him as the taxi driver murdering husband of Brian May, who used to say "Princess" and drink his own cash-and-carry-bought whisky. Instead he came back as an old, bald pirate who used his hook hand to masturbate live on the internet.
Then there was Frank Butcher, who was known to millions as a successful fat, ugly Essex twat in a pork pie hat and gold rings, who told unfunny, sexist and borderline racist and homphobic "jokes" in front of audiences of Sun "reading" chimps. He was brought back to try and win back the huge hand of butch bull-dike, turquoise eye shadow and huge dangly earing wearing nonagenarian, Pat "really" Butch from rubbish ex-Liverpool manager Roy Evans.
Then they tried bringing back Tucker Jenkins. This was the most disappointing of all. We were all looking forward to more adventures from the cheeky, bowl-cutted schoolboy who said "flippin' 'eck, Benny", and used to go into chinese chipshops, put in comedy false teeth and bow, saying "Chippies", before being chased by an irate chinese chef wielding a meat cleaver. Instead, all we got was a fat baldy with pretend AIDS, whose lame catchphrase "flippin' 'eck Ian", was really unconvincing and who never did anything funny in Ian Beale's dull chip shop.
They should bring back Ethel Slocombe, or was it Molly Skinner, with her catchphrase "Ooh my Willy!" or was it "Oooh, My Pussy!"? Now I'm confused.
