| Roly | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| EastEnders character | |||||
 | |||||
| Portrayed by | Roly | ||||
| Duration | 1985–1993 | ||||
| First appearance | Episode 1 "Poor Old Reg" 19 February 1985 | ||||
| Last appearance | Episode 909 19 October 1993 | ||||
| Classification | Former; regular | ||||
| Species | Dog | ||||
| Breed | Standard Poodle | ||||
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Roly is a fictional dog from the BBC soap opera EastEnders . Roly is an apricot coloured Standard Poodle, who appears in the first episode of the programme on 19 February 1985 and remained in the show until 19 October 1993.
Roly was given to Sharon Watts (Letitia Dean) by her father, Den (Leslie Grantham). Sharon's mother, Angie (Anita Dobson), does not like the dog much and once even accuses him of deliberately causing her to trip and fall on the stairs. However, during Den and Angie's divorce in 1987, Angie is horrified to hear that Den is considering selling Roly. She storms round to The Queen Victoria public house and demands that Den give Roly to her.
Roly is involved in many storylines during his time in the show. He is often used by his owners as a silent sounding board, and is made privy to all their secrets and woes. It is Roly who first alerted viewers to the fact that his owner, Den, had got the 16-year-old schoolgirl Michelle Fowler (Susan Tully) pregnant in October 1985; one of the soaps most renowned 'whodunit' plots. After months of speculation, Michelle goes to meet the father at a nearby canal, and Roly bounds out of the mystery man's car, showing the identity of the man to be Den. [1]
Roly is a bit of a rogue from time to time. He tramples over Tom Clements' (Donald Tandy) prize leeks, which leads to Tom stealing Arthur Fowler's (Bill Treacher) leeks and winning first prize in the London in Bloom competition. He also bites Alan McIntyre (Pip Miller) on the bottom after he tries to evict Ali (Nejdet Salih) and Sue Osman (Sandy Ratcliff). [1] He also tears apart Ethel Skinner's (Gretchen Franklin) Christening gown she'd been knitting for the Fowlers.
Roly gives everyone a fright when he eats some rat poison that Debbie Wilkins (Shirley Cheriton) had laid down in the First til Last grocery store. However, after being sick on the floor of James Willmott-Brown's (William Boyde) new carpet at The Dagmar, he makes a full recovery. [1]
Roly is the first to find Pat Wicks (Pam St. Clement) in the Albert Square gardens when she had been savaged by the Walford ripper. Pat later demands that he be kicked out of The Vic when the Butchers move in in 1988. Roly then runs away, but is found by Junior Roberts (Aaron Carrington), who returns him to the Butchers. Diane Butcher (Sophie Lawrence) and Ricky Butcher (Sid Owen) change Pat's mind, and Mo Butcher (Edna Doré), who at first suggests they get a kennel for Roly, warms to him so much that he goes to live with her at her flat for a while. [1]
When Eddie Royle (Michael Melia) becomes the new landlord of The Vic in 1990, Roly lives with him and Sharon Watts, who lodges there as barmaid. It is whilst out walking Roly one evening that Eddie is stabbed and left to die in the middle of the Square. His body is only found after Roly begins barking. Roly then lives with his original owner, Sharon, and her husband Grant Mitchell (Ross Kemp). [1]
Roly has several brushes with death over the years. He is injured in a car accident caused by a drunk Pete Beale (Peter Dean) and is nearly burnt alive (along with Sharon) when Grant torches The Vic in an insurance scam. However, in October 1993, Roly's luck finally runs out when Sharon asks Grant to take Roly for a walk, but he pays Mandy Salter (Nicola Stapleton) £10 to do it for him. A few hours later, Mandy returns to explain the circumstances of Roly's death to Grant and Sharon. According to Mandy, Roly slipped his lead to chase a cat and was run over by a lorry. Sharon is devastated. 14.8 million viewers watched Roly's last appearance on-screen. [2] However, in the following episode, Mandy admits to her boyfriend, Aidan Brosnan (Sean Maguire), that she let go of Roly because he was pulling too hard and his lead was cutting into her hand. Grant tries to cheer Sharon up by giving her Freda, Nigel's greyhound, but she refuses to accept her.
Roly was cast less than a week before the filming of EastEnders began. From the beginning it was decided that the occupants of The Queen Victoria pub, Den, Angie and Sharon Watts, were to have a German Shepherd named Prince. [3] However, finding an Alsatian that was light enough in colour not to merge into the background of the set proved to be difficult. Eventually, the co-creator/producer of the show, Julia Smith, was contacted by a company named Janimals, who specialised in providing and training animals for television and films. They had found a seven-month-old Poodle, called Roly, who might still be young enough to be trained. Training was said to take three weeks, and as the Poodle was a similar size to an Alsatian, Roly got the part. Roly was made the property of the BBC, given an ID card, and taken to live with Julia Smith at her home in London. Roly and Willy the pug shared a dressing room at Elstree studios. [4] Smith hired a dog-sitter to care for Roly when she moved to Spain to create the soap opera Eldorado . [5]
Roly departed the show in 1993. Off-screen, the real Roly was getting too old to appear regularly on television, so it was decided that he should retire to live with Julia Smith. On 2 August 1995, Roly died following an operation for breathing problems aggravated by the 1995 heatwave. [6]
Dennis Alan "Den" Watts is a fictional character from the BBC soap opera EastEnders, played by actor Leslie Grantham. He became well known for his tabloid nickname, "Dirty Den".
Sharon Watts is a fictional character from the BBC One soap opera EastEnders, played by Letitia Dean. Sharon was one of EastEnders' original characters conceptualised by creators Tony Holland and Julia Smith. She first appeared in the first episode broadcast on 19 February 1985 as the teenage adopted daughter of pub landlords Den and Angie Watts. Sharon became prominent in the 1990s due to her becoming the landlady of The Queen Victoria public house and her romantic pairings with brothers Grant and Phil Mitchell. In a storyline dubbed Sharongate, Sharon married Grant and then has an affair with Phil, climaxing in 1994 with Grant's discovery of the affair, which remains one of EastEnders' highest viewed episodes; the storyline was reinvented in 2018 when Sharon began an affair with a much younger Keanu Taylor. She was named the best EastEnders character of all time by the Daily Mirror in 2020. For her portrayal of Sharon, Dean won the award for "Outstanding Achievement" at the 2022 British Soap Awards.
Walford is a fictional borough of east London in the BBC soap opera EastEnders. It is the primary setting for the soap. EastEnders is filmed at Borehamwood in Hertfordshire, towards the north-west of London. Much of the location work is filmed in nearby Watford, which was chosen for many of the exterior scenes due to its close proximity and the town's name being so similar to Walford. Thus, any stray road signs or advertising boards which are accidentally filmed in the back of shots will appear to read Walford. Locations used in Watford include most interior and exterior church scenes of various churches, the snooker club, the County Court and Magistrates' Courts courtrooms, and the cemetery.
Chrissie Watts is a fictional character from the BBC soap opera EastEnders, played by Tracy-Ann Oberman. She first appeared on 29 April 2004 and transpired to be the second wife of the show's "most enduring character", Den Watts - thus ended up becoming a prominent regular for the next 18 months. In 2005, Chrissie was the focus of one of "the programme's biggest and most high-profile narratives" when she murdered her husband in self-defence at the end of the special 20th anniversary episode. The broadcast, airing on 18 February, was watched by 14.34 million people - with "almost 60% of possible viewers" tuning in to see Chrissie killing Den. The character was credited by former head of BBC Drama Serials, Mal Young, as "anchoring the success of the anniversary storyline", and was described on the news programme BBC Breakfast as the "centrepiece" of the show, with the on-screen drama playing out over the course of the year and culminating in Chrissie's departure on 9 December 2005.
The Queen Victoria is the Victorian public house in the BBC soap opera, EastEnders. It has the fictional address of 46 Albert Square, Walford, London E20.
Angie Watts is a fictional character from the BBC soap opera EastEnders, played by Anita Dobson from the first episode of the series until 1988, when Dobson decided to leave, and the character was written out.
EastEnders is a long-running British soap opera that has aired on BBC One since 19 February 1985. Since its inception, several spin-offs have been produced, including books, television documentaries, videos, music singles and an album. During the run up to the first episode of EastEnders, interest with the public was already high, something which continued afterwards. EastEnders proved as successful as was hoped for by the BBC in its first years, so they capitalised on it with a number of products.
"Sharongate" is the term used for a storyline in the BBC soap opera EastEnders, which reached its climax on 24 October 1994, attracting 25.3 million viewers. The plot was written by EastEnders scriptwriter Tony Jordan. In the storyline, Sharon Mitchell confessed on tape that she had had sex with her husband's brother, Phil. The truth comes out in the middle of The Queen Victoria pub. Sharon's husband Grant attacked his brother and Phil was lucky to survive.
Vicki Fowler is a fictional character from the BBC soap opera EastEnders, played by Emma Herry from the character's birth in 1986 to 1988, Samantha Leigh Martin from 1988 to 1995, and Scarlett Alice Johnson from 2003 to 2004. She is the daughter of Michelle Fowler and Den Watts. The character is born in the serial, conceived in a controversial storyline about teenage pregnancy. Exploiting a whodunnit angle, at the time of the first showing, viewers were not initially told who was the father, and press interest in the fledgling show escalated as journalists attempted to guess. The audience finally discovered his identity in October 1985 in episode 66. Written by series co-creator/script-editor Tony Holland and directed by co-creator/producer Julia Smith, it was considered a landmark episode in the show's history. Early suspects were Ian Beale and Kelvin Carpenter, but then four possible suspects are seen leaving the Square early in the episode: Tony Carpenter, Ali Osman, Andy O'Brien, and Den Watts. As Michelle waits by their rendezvous point, a car pulls up and the fluffy white legs of the soap landlord's poodle Roly leap out of a car to give it all away: Den Watts is the father of Michelle's baby. After this storyline the programme started to appear in newspaper cartoons as it moved more and more into the public mainstream. Vicki's character was written out in October 1995, after Susan Tully, who played Vicki's mother Michelle, decided to leave the soap.
The Beales and the Fowlers are a fictional family in the BBC soap opera EastEnders. They were the main family for storylines in early episodes of EastEnders, and remained as such ever since. With at least one member of the family having been a member of the cast from the first episode in February 1985, they are the show's longest serving family. The original Beale/Fowler family consisted of matriarch Lou Beale and her children Pete and Pauline, alongside their families including their children Ian, Mark, Michelle and their spouses Kathy Hills and Arthur Fowler. Additionally, several members of the family have been introduced at a later point, including Pauline and Arthur's son Martin who was the first baby to be born into the show in 1985. The family has been headed with a matriarch first seen with Lou, and over the years, Lou's daughter Pauline, Ian's wife Jane Collins and more recently Pete's wife Kathy, have filled this role.
Michelle Fowler is a fictional character from the BBC soap opera EastEnders, played by Susan Tully from the show's first episode on 19 February 1985 up until the character's departure on 26 October 1995. She returned on 24 December 2016, with Jenna Russell taking over the role, before leaving the serial once again on 17 April 2018.
Simon "Wicksy" Wicks is a fictional character from the British BBC soap opera EastEnders, played by Nick Berry between 1985 and 1990. Wicksy was introduced to take on some of the more adult storylines that had been scripted for another character, Mark Fowler; Mark's actor, David Scarboro, had left the serial prematurely due to personal problems. Wicksy was the soap's first male pin-up.
Tony Carpenter is a fictional character from the BBC soap opera EastEnders, played by Oscar James, from 28 February 1985 until 28 May 1987.
Mo Butcher is a fictional character from the BBC soap opera EastEnders, played by Edna Doré between 1988 and 1990. She is introduced as the matriarch figure of the Butcher family, Frank Butcher's elderly mother. She is portrayed as a battle-axe, tough and interfering. Her most notable storyline first aired in 1990, when the character is used to portray descent into Alzheimer's disease. Doré opted to leave the serial that same year; Mo was written out of the soap making her last appearance in November. Mo was killed off in 1992, but her death was not screened.
Dickens Hill is a fictional prison in the BBC soap opera EastEnders. The prison is part of a storyline that first aired between 1988 and 1989. The storyline centres on the popular character Den Watts and was filmed on location at Dartmoor Prison in Devon. The episodes were shot in a block of intensive filming, over five weeks, but they were worked into regular episodes of EastEnders later in the year, from September 1988 to February 1989. This was done in order to keep the character Den Watts on-screen after Den's actor, Leslie Grantham, had left the show. Although not part of the original storyline, the prison also briefly appears in 2017 when Max Branning visits his former cellmate, Luke Browning. The prison also appears in a separate storyline in 2018 when Mick Carter is on remand for the shooting of Stuart Highway.
The Watts family are a fictional family in the BBC soap opera EastEnders. The family consists of Den, Angie, Sharon, Dennis, Chrissie, Vicki, Dennis Jnr, Albie and Alyssa. Sharon's half-brother Zack Hudson is also considered to be part of the family.
