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Message: <blockquote data-quote="James from London" data-source="post: 116523" data-attributes="member: 22">Peggy Mitchell: I've always been honest with you, Grant, both of you, ever since you were kids.Peggy to Phil: When you was a kid, you could always come to me if there was something bothering you. You could talk to me then.Peggy to Phil and Grant: I brought you up to look out for each other.Phil Mitchell: I had to share a room with Grant.Grant Mitchell, looking around their childhood bedroom: Your bed was there.Phil: No, it was there. It was next to the door.Phil: I used to [wet the bed] when I was a kid.Phil on Grant: We've done everything together for as long as I can remember.Grant to Phil: All my life, you told me there's nothing so bad that you can't tell your brother about.Peggy on Phil: He was a nosy little boy.Peggy to Phil: When you were kids, you'd always cover up for him [Grant].Peggy: I brought up Grant and Phil — I can tell a pork pie from five hundred paces with me eyes shut.Peggy: I raised you, Phil. I've seen you lie through your teeth about stealing sweets when you've had chocolate all over your face.Phil on his favourite toffees: Mum used to say they’d pull me fillings out. She was nearly right as well.Shirley Carter on Bay & Brown candies: My mum used to buy them.Grant on himself and Phil: Ever since I can remember, people have been wanting us to come a cropper. They hated what we were. But we always had each other.Phil on himself and Grant: Most people expected us to both end up in the nick.Phil: People thinking the worst of you — I’ve had it all my life. Mind you, in my case, they’re probably right.Phil: My family, I don't know — not much on trusting people. Even as kids we were taught to watch our backs, keep our eyes peeled. Mum taught us that and it just sort of stuck.Phil: Mum used to give us a clout when we got covered in mud.Grant: You used to give me slaps.Peggy: That's because I'm your mother.Peggy: Things were different in those days. We hit our kids. It wasn’t that big a deal. I’m not saying it was right. I’m just saying that’s how it was. We didn’t know any differentPeggy on Grant: He's stubborn, just like his father — and his father before that, no doubt.Peggy on Grant: Never could admit when he was in the wrong. Do you know, I never remember him ever saying he was sorry, not all the time he was growing up. Phil would sometimes, but never Grant.Peggy on Phil: Even as a kid, he never spoke to me [disrespectfully].Peggy: I've spent my whole life supporting this family, especially you, Grant.Phil to Peggy: When I was little, you used to thump any kids that gave me and Grant a hard time.Peggy on Phil and Grant: If you think those boys are tough, where do you think they got it from? Not Eric.Peggy to Phil and Grant: You both got a taste for slapping people around. You got it from your father.Jimmie Broome, lawyer, on Phil: Mr Mitchell has been brought up in the school of hard knocks.Alfie Phillips, boxing manager, to Phil and Grant: I liked your dad. It wasn't his fault he was brought up in a hard school. Let's just say, he was a man of the world.Johnny Allen to Phil and Grant: Your old man [was] a joke, pathetic.Peggy on Eric: My old man was a boxer, fists like sides of beef.Phil: Flash Eric, they called him. He had a good right hook on him.Grant to Jackie Stone, market trader and ex-boxer: You slaughtered our old man in the fourth round.Phil: Thomas of Beckett, Old Kent Road, 196[6]. Jackie Stone: Good bloke, your old man. Footwork, that was Mitch's strong point. Lovely feet.Johnny to Phil: Your old man’s footwork — plodding.Phil: I reckon you must have been the last to take a fight off of him.Jackie: I don't know about that.Pauline to nephew Ian: You think you invented hard work? Well let me tell you, that Jackie Stone was out grafting night and day long before you was even born.Jake Moon: Johnny [Allen] was a boxer once.Peggy: “Johnny Allen, the up and coming young boxer.”Johnny: Happy days.Johnny: The Mitchell boys — we met once.Phil: Yeah.Johnny: You were kids then.Johnny on Eric Mitchell: He was a loser.Peggy: At least he didn’t take money for it. If you could go back to that fight, would you still take that dive — now you know how it ended your boxing career?Johnny: It launched Eric’s, didn’t it?Johnny to Phil: I’ve done your family enough favours over the years.Grant: Our old man used to box with Johnny. Johnny was round our house all the time when we were kids. Presents at Christmas, all sorts.Phil: We even used to call him Uncle Johnny.Phil: Dad always said that Johnny fancied himself as a businessman.Peggy: [Eric] came to you when he was desperate.Johnny: And I took him in.Peggy: Yeah, and turned him into one of your lackeys.Johnny: Came home bleating to the wife, did he?Peggy: Who do you think he took it out on then? Did you have any idea what life was like for me?Johnny: It was none of my business.Peggy: You bullied Eric and he bullied us.Johnny: I was toughening him up.Peggy: Is that how you justify it to yourself — taking away a man’s pride, his dignity?Johnny: He didn’t have any.Peggy: No, not by the time you finished with him. You broke him in two and left me and my children to live with the pieces.Phil on his father: He was a right hard nut, you know. Every Friday night he'd be down the pub and on the way home, a bag of chips and a scrap. "A man's man," that's what Mum called him, which meant he was nice to his mates and horrible to her. Still smell him, Brylcreem and Old Spice.Peggy on family keepsakes she carried in her purse: Me old mum's St Christopher and a tiny little black and white [photo] of Grant and Phil when they were kids, taken on Southend Pier.Peggy looking an old photograph: Here's Phil pushing Grant on the swings. He did a somersault. Had to have five stitches.Peggy to Phil: You and Grant [were always at each other’s throats]. Too close in age. Aunt Sal said it would always cause problems.Phil: When we was kids, if ever I nicked one of your toys, you used to sit in the corner sulking, building pyramids out of them little plastic bricks we had.Grant: The ones with letters on? We used to make rude words with them, leave them on the doorstep when Nan came round.Phil on Grant: He's just being his usual stroppy self when he doesn't get his own way. He's been like it since he was a baby.Peggy: Phil and Grant were always a handful, right from when they were toddlers. I never knew half of what they got up to. Never did and never will, I suppose.Peggy to Phil: All you and Grant have ever done is hurt me.Phil to Grant: Do you remember when she [Peggy] used to tell us them stories about growing up in the East End? That was when it was the real East End, of course. Used to go on for hours, she did, even after we'd fallen asleep.Peggy on her sherry trifle: Remember, Phil? It was always your favourite when you were little. I used to cover it with chocolate sprinkles.Peggy: Baked riced pudding. It was always [Phil's] favourite. It always did the trick when he was little.Dot Cotton on Nick: He always loved angel cake when he was a little boy.Nana Moon to her grandson Alfie: You used to love spam fritters when you was little.Alfie Moon: When I was a kid, I was really into salad cream sarnies and me nan's been making them for me ever since, bless her.Peggy: The number of meals I cooked for you over the years.Phil: Yeah, out of a packet.Peggy to Grant: "Come on, put your feet on mine and I'll show you how to dance." That's what I used to do when you were little.Nick Cotton on ‘Ain’t Misbehaving’ by Fats Domino: You and me used to dance round the room to this when I got back from school.Dot: So we did.Peggy on ‘My Way’: My husband liked that song.Frank Butcher: My old dad used to say, "It ain't over till the fat lady sings."Grant: My old man used to have a motto — "Price is the test of quality."Minty Peterson: My mum always told me to keep it light.Derek Branning: My Great Aunt Vi, she used to say to me, “Derek, it’s going to be a good day today. I can feel it in me waters.”Phil: Our old man had an allotment. Spent hours up there, he did.Billy Mitchell: I grew up with Phil and Grant.Ronnie Mitchell: They always said where Phil and Grant were, Billy was never far behind.Billy: Phil's dad Eric was [my father]'s cousin.Billy: [Phil] was a mate of [my brother Charlie].Phil on Charlie Mitchell: I knew him well.Peggy on Billy: [He's] Grant's cousin — I don't know, a third cousin or something on the Mitchell side. Not my favourite branch of the family.Alfie Moon: Eddie’s granddad is my granddad’s brother.Big Mo: So what does that make you two?Alfie: Second cousins once removed, twice removed, is it?Eddie Moon: Confused, that’s what it makes us.Ian Beale: How many times did [Phil] give you a clout when you were growing up?Billy: That’s different.Billy to Phil: I spent all my life trying to be like you, think like you.Billy: I followed you all my life, Phil, and I ain’t never asked for anything. I’ve gone everywhere you’ve gone. And I ain’t ever asked any questions, not once, just always done what you wanted me to do.Peggy on Billy: He always was a cowardly little runt. He's weak and useless, always has been.Billy: I knew Peggy when she was married to Eric. Wasn't quite so high and mighty then, I can tell you.Peggy on Engelbert Humperdinck: I once went on one of those girls’ nights out to the London Palladium to see him. What he did with his hips! We all took our knickers and chucked them at the stage!Peggy to Phil: Scott Walker, he was gorgeous. The only time I was ever unfaithful to your father was with Scott Walker — in me mind. You needed a bit of imagination because your father certainly didn't have any.Billy on Peggy: She had at least one affair that I knew of, with this cabby. He used to come round when Eric was training down the gym.Johnny Allen: That night that Eric was working up in Liverpool, flashing your suspenders and showing off your cleavage — don’t tell me you weren’t up for it.Peggy: The very idea that I’d have gone to bed with you!Archie Mitchell, speaking in 2009: Midnight, candle light, scotch — takes me back to Queenie’s.Peggy: Last I heard it was a knocking shop.Archie: Always was if we’re honest.Peggy: Why did you and Eric like it so much? It was a horrible, seedy dive.Archie: Don’t tell me you never had a good night there. I mean I know for sure you had one. Remember that?Peggy: There were lots of nights.Archie: Only one, as far as I’m concerned. Where was Eric?Peggy: A stag.Archie: Yeah? Yeah, Bobby Gee’s stag, Hastings. Bobby Gee - I wonder whatever happened to him?Peggy: Kidney cancer, that’s what happened to him. You missed his stag, his wedding, his funeral. Why do you think that was?Archie: I don’t know.Peggy: Bobby didn’t like you. But then, most of Eric’s friends didn’t like you, did they?Archie: Yeah, me trying to be one of the boys, eh?Peggy: Fellas like men they can trust. So they sussed you out right away. I remember Eric saying to me one night that he wished you could get blind drunk, show him you were human, show him you could lose control. But you never did, did you?Archie: It’s my character. Never wanted to leave meself open.Glenda Mitchell, Archie’s wife, to their daughter Roxy: Your dad always had a knack of making enemies.Archie: Does the name Maureen Loftus mean anything to you?Phil: Vaguely, yeah.Archie: Maureen was the wife of Dougie Loftus. He was a small time boxing promoter. That’s how your dad first met her. Maureen was — how can I put it? — a very attractive lady and your old man — well, you know, I don’t have to spell it out. This wasn’t your usual "wham bam thank-you, ma’am”. This was the real thing. Like a lovesick puppy he was.Phil: How long did this go on for then?Archie: A couple of years.Phil: So was this like a full blown love affair?Archie: That’s certainly how your old man saw it.Peggy: Affairs happen. Me and [Eric were] able to work it out. Details don't matter. What matters is we fought to stay together. [Having children] makes a difference.Peggy, speaking to Billy in 2005: I used to know a bloke like you once, back in the old days — Dougie Collins. He was a baker. He looked up to Johnny Allen, until he put him in hospital.Billy: What for?Peggy: He spelt a name wrong on a birthday cake.Pat: I’ve heard the story, Peggy. There’s more to it than that.Peggy: He put something on a cake that Johnny objected to. So Johnny goes round, takes the letters off the shop front and lays into him with the letter T. [Billy laughs] Oh, you think a shattered pelvis and a detached retina’s funny, do you?Johnny Allen: That’s only half the story.Dougie Collins: You stamped on my face, Johnny. You left me for dead.Johnny: You were being disrespectful.Dougie: I made a mistake on a cake and you half kill me?Johnny: You were trying to undermine me, making moves you shouldn’t have been making.Dougie: You saw to it that I didn’t have any moves left at the end of it. I couldn’t work, I lost all my money.Peggy: And it wasn’t just a one off. This man [Johnny] was a thief, an extorter and I wouldn’t be surprised if he was a murderer.Ruby Allen: Were you a gangster?Johnny: Yes.Ruby: Have you ever used a gun on anyone?Johnny: Yes.Johnny, speaking in 2006 about the first murder he committed: I’ll be going back forty years.Saeed Jeffery: Mother told me something when I was young. She was lame, my mother. Very sensitive about it. Stayed indoors a lot. Just sat there, staring into space, thinking. What she told me was, "It's hard for a man respect another man's good fortune without begrudging it."Minty: My mum always used to draw the curtains, you know, if there was anything to worry about. It was like a permanent state of mourning round our house.Minty: My mother, a right tartar.Lofty Holloway: I used to hate my mum. She was always going on at me about something or other. I was only really happy when I went away, you know, like to scout camp and that. We used to have a right laugh then. You're a part of something, you know, not like when you're back home — you're just a nuisance getting in the way. That's what I really hate about my mum, she made me feel like that. I think really my Auntie Irene was more important than my mum was.Auntie Irene on Lofty: His mother, my dear sister, she could never work out whether he was thick as two planks or too good to be true. "God knows what's to become of him," she used to say.Lofty on his mother: It really used to hurt me the way she'd look at me. I'd see other kids, the way their mum looked at them and think, "What's wrong with me? Why does she hate me?" She did. She never said it, but she did. She wouldn't even buy me one of them — I wanted one of them Easter eggs, you know — the little ones in the little china egg cups so you can keep the cup after you've eaten the chocolate. I used to go down the shop and look at them in the window. If she come down and caught me, she'd just drag me away.Lofty: Me dad was a complete doormat. Me mum used to care more about her net curtains and brass ornaments. She was what they call an obsessional housewife. She used to follow me and Dad around with a duster. Poor old Dad. He was useless. For all he was an army man, he could never stand up to her.</blockquote>

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