so long, Pauline

I was a little perturbed by the heat of the argument that developed on my “Michelle and I” post. I had no idea grammar was such a barricades-inspired issue. Anyway, after my Donaghian philosophical foray I’m going to bring us back down the brow again with a little tribute to Wendy Richard.

Time was when this was practically an EastEnders blog, so frequent were my exflorescences on the horrors of taste perpetrated by whatever EastEnders episode (to say nothing of the horrors of taste perpetrated by Leslie Grantham, between whom and his co-star I gather there was little love lost) –  and many of them were probably about Wendy Richard. The episode of Pauline’s death was so preposterous, so ridiculous, so depressingly over-the-toply unuplifting and just sad – well, it is engraved on my memory as if it had been stamped there with a cast-iron doorstop in the shape of a dog.

I admired her very much for leaving the show because she thought they were taking her character in the wrong directions. In other words, she was fuming against the horrors of taste too. The whole thing had gone crazy with that depressing remarriage etc, and all the humanity had gone out of Pauline – and she, the actress who had developed the character over twenty years, was right to go.

The rest is silence, as you know: with all the amusing characters killed off and nothing but the odd guest appearance from the bowdlerised Grant Mitchell to look forward to, I finally managed to break my addiction.

I was sad yesterday to hear this news.

And I was very touched indeed to read a tribute written by none other than Mr Cultural Highbrow himself, Mark Lawson. He begins with the very promising sentence, “Actors in long-running series serve as clocks…” and goes on to describe Pauline’s mistreatment at the hands of the BBC as the bosses’ desire for “an East End Mother Courage.”

Her strength of character (was that what inspired the Brechtian persona?) was evident when she told the Daily Express last year, with philosophy one can only admire, “Now I have a cancerous growth on my right kidney and the cancer has spread to my bones. It’s more aggressive this time, unfortunately…”

Bringing us back to the glory days when Wendy Richard was a young sparky actress, Lawson talks about her role as Miss Brahms in Are You Being Served? saying, “Few performers are given even one part that remains in the public consciousness for decades and Wendy Richard managed two.”

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