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Message: <blockquote data-quote="James from London" data-source="post: 117227" data-attributes="member: 22">1972Grant Mitchell to Peggy: I can remember us rowing over Christine Patterson because she sent me a Valentine's card when I was nine.Andrew Cotton: The amount of birthdays you’ve ruined.Rose Cotton: I’ve always tried to make your birthdays fun.Andrew: Yeah? Fifth birthday — house full of strangers from the pub. Me, eating cake off the floor where it had been dropped.Rose: You’re not usually so fussed where your cake comes from.Andrew: I’d been asking and asking for this red toy motorbike. Saw it in the window every day. Opened me present. It was a football.Rose: It was leather. All boys love football.Andrew: Anything I ever wanted, you never listened.Max Branning to Carol’s grandson Morgan: I’ve got a story about your nan. Family folklore, this is. She’s nine. She thought she was going to be Queen of the May or something, school fete. So she’s got a fancy frock on, she’s got a little tiara, the whole works. But the school, they make a mistake. They give it to another Carol. Now, your nan, apparently she’s fine with all this, but before you know it, she disappears, gone. Total panic — my mum and dad going nuts, they’ve half the East End out looking for her, it’s getting dark, police are called, everything. Do you know where she was? Outside toilet, back of the house. That’s where she was all along. That’s where she was hiding. True story. Derek Branning: I’ve been lucky enough to be the oldest sibling and watch these three [Carol, Max and Jack] come into the world.Max on his brother Jack’s birthdate: Fifth of September, 1972.Max: All you ever did [as a baby] was sleep.Jack Branning: How do you know? You were only three.Max: It’s engraved on my heart, isn’t it? The most boring brother in the world.Max to Jack: I’ve spent my entire life looking at your smug little face.Jack: I got the [physically fit] genes, didn’t I?Peggy Mitchell: You boys never refused a fry up at that age [ten].Phil Mitchell: Yeah, and look how we turned out.Shirley Carter: When I was [ten years old], I told every white lie in the book to get attention.Shirley: A friend of mine had some sort of breakdown at school. Ended up doing herself in.Phil: I didn’t go to school a lot.Peggy: No wonder I used to get all those letters.Peggy: I used to have to drag my two off to school. A complete waste of time. As soon as the teacher's back was turned, they'd run off.Grant: Mum was always going down the school about me when I was young.Phil: The only time I came top [of the class] is when I cheated.Phil: You think I was never a kid, eh - threw a sickie, trying to get out of something I didn’t want to do?Phil: When I started secondary school, this big kid started bullying me. I even started using a different route home, trying to avoid him, but then I realised I couldn’t hide for the rest of me life. I stood up to him.Ben: Did he hit you?Phil: Well, as it happens, it was more the other way round. It did the trick and he never bothered me again.Phil on being bullied: Dad gave us "the talk”.Grant: “Anyone gives you lip, give them a slap.”Phil: It worked with me.Alfie Moon to Nana Moon: Remember the time that Mum and Dad went on holiday and you had to look after me? You knew I was fretting about something and you wouldn’t let it drop till I told you. So I told you about this kid at school called Steven Melio who was nicking my dinner money. Do you remember him?Nana Moon: Oh yes, he was a nasty bit of work, wasn’t he?Alfie: And you booked an appointment for us to go and see the headmaster and I was so terrified you were going to make it worse. Anyway, on the home, you brought me to a caff and you got me a doughnut with hundred and thousands on it and you promised me that everything was going to be all right. You said to me, “Alfie, a problem shared is a problem halved.” And you were right because I never went hungry at dinner time again.Eddie Moon: You must have been — what, about seven or eight when I first took you down the Brisbane Road? Had you on my shoulders, remember? The ball hit you.Alfie: Right in the mush. Yes, I remember.Eddie: I thought you’d be crying, but you were laughing.Alfie: Of course I was laughing, Eddie. You were being beaten by Chelsea, weren’t you?!Arthur Fowler: West Ham and Hereford in the [1972] cup — [West Ham] were non-league, but they done Newcastle the round before.Phil: Afternoon kick-off, something to do with the power.Grant: The miners were on strike.Phil: Our headmaster had locked the school gates, having had a whisper there was going to be a mass exodus. So I'm up and over the railings. The head's got hold of my foot, and I'm telling him, "If you don't let go, my old man's going to give you a right slap."Grant: He was petrified of our old man because he was a boxer.Phil: I saw a good game. 3-1 it was. [West Ham] slaughtered them, gave them a right hiding.Grant: [Phil] got the cane for that.Derek Harkinson: I never caned anyone, not once in eleven years. They all thought I was soft.Arthur: I put one like that [a brilliant penalty] in meself. Lea Valley, 1972. The goalkeeper didn't get a glove on it.Cora Cross: Back in the day, men really knew how to play the beautiful game. It was all about raw passion.Glenda Mitchell: I couldn’t eat a thing before my wedding. I was so nervous.Glenda to her daughter Ronnie: Weddings are all about the dress. Men just don’t get it. Your father was the same.Peggy on Glenda’s wedding dress: It was a bit of a frilly thing, weren’t it?Glenda: No, not at all. Archie said I looked like a princess and that’s just how I felt. It certainly made for a memorable wedding night.Glenda to her daughter Roxy: Carnations, they were your father’s favourite. That’s what he had as the buttonholes at our wedding - yellow carnations. And he always said he wanted them in his wreath. Personally, I always thought they looked cheap.Glenda: I had everything at my wedding, an enormous marquee — you could have fit a circus in there — Pink Floyd cover band, practically everyone I’d ever met.Ronnie: And no doubt your carriage was drawn by six white horses.Glenda: A 1972 Silver Shadow, actually.Frank Butcher: A year before you was born, your mum was pregnant with another baby, only she lost it at twelve weeks.Ricky Butcher: I had no idea.Frank: No, well, me and your mum couldn't discuss it, it hurt too much — but then you come along. I think that's one of the reasons you've always been my special boy.Shirley on Ricky: Did someone drop him on his head as a baby or what?Darren Miller: Probably.Kathy Beale: I remember Ian's first day at nursery. I was heartbroken.Kathy on Ian: He's always been a bit protective of me. He was [competitive with] Pete. Always asking who I loved the most. We were inseparable then.Ian on the importance of family: I've had it drummed into me since I was knee-high to a grasshopper.Ian on the fruit and veg stall: I was brought up working it with me dad. I've been taking stock since I was a nipper.Melanie Healy: I have this picture of Ian helping his dad out on the stall before he could hardly walk.Pauline Fowler to Ian: I lost years carrying you about while your mum and dad was on the stall.Alfie on Nana Moon: She looked after me when I was a kid when I really needed her.Alfie on Nana Moon: She never failed me once.Alfie on Nana Moon: She used to kiss me on each eyelid when I was a kid.Alfie: My nana taught me everything I know. Of course, I ignored her.Alfie: Nana, do you remember that time when you took me to Ally Pally and I wanted to go to the toilet and you took me to the cafe and I got locked in there? I was really frightened I was going to stay in there all night. People started locking up and I was in there on my own. I was so scared and I was only eight and I could hear all these voices outside and I was calling out your name. And you came striding into the gents and people were trying to stop you, and you come looking for me and you were shouting out my name.Hazel Hobbs on Garry: He used to have accidents. I had to give up taking him visiting when he was little because of his accidents because his bladder’s ever so small.Garry Hobbs on Hazel: She’s always been trouble, all my life.Hazel to Garry: You always had the knack of screwing me up. You’ve got a sewer mind. Even when you was a toddler, I’d have to watch you very careful or you’d have your nappy off.Rose Cotton on Andrew: When he was little, he used to run around without any pants. I used to let him — get a nice breeze through his undercarriage.Peggy: Phil and Grant had every sort of pet under the sun when they were kids.Phil on Grant: When he was a kid, someone ran over his pet rat.Dan Sullivan: When I was a kid, I had a little tiny pet rat. Thing is, I got bored of it and ended up drowning it. Cruel that, isn't it?Nigel Bates: Pete Egbert tied a hanky round my guinea pig and lobbed him off the viaduct.Mehmet Osman: I went to Turkey for my education. That's why I'm the brainy one. Left the family fold and came back a stranger.Ali Osman, Mehment’s brother: I was a right little terror when I was a kid. When I was [sixteen], I wanted to be a professional gambler, didn't I? Girl on each arm and a Porsche outside.Kevin Wicks: Where did you get all your info from [about] sex, growing up, all the rest of it?Max Branning: School, playground, back of the bike sheds.Kevin: Same here. It was probably the same for you.Phil Mitchell: Yeah.Kevin: All that pony you hear off your mates you think’s true like, “If you touch it, a potato will grow out your ear and everybody will know what you’ve been doing.”Nigel Bates on the facts of life: My old mum called it — mind you, it was different then, people didn't really talk about it openly like we do now — but my old mum called it "courting".Shirley Carter to her mother Sylvie: The first time I come on my period at school, the teacher had to convince me that I wasn’t dying because I didn’t know. You never told me.Peggy: You should have heard some of things my two [boys] used to come out with.Peggy on Phil and Grant: Terrible, they were. I once caught them melting down their granddad's war medals.Grant: We thought they were gold and silver and we'd sell them for a fortune.Peggy: Ruined me oven.Phil: Granddad weren't too pleased either, was he?Nana Moon on her husband's war medals: I had them insured once for a couple of hundred pounds. It's not much, is it, for what my William went through?Jim Branning: Geezer I knew had a couple [of war medals] left to him in the war. Put [them in] an auction in the end. He bought a car, didn't he? The only new car he ever had.Norman Simmonds: Do you remember that knockdown classic sports car that Frank bought that time?Pat: Yeah, turned out to be a ringer.Norman: Yeah but then he found a load of jewellery in the glovebox.Pat: Worth twice what he paid for the car!Norman: Frank always was the lucky one, with money and the ladies.Terry Raymond: When I bought my first car, my hand was shaking when I wrote out the cheque. I thought it was so much money - two hundred and fifty pounds.Terry: My very first car [was] a Standard Vanguard 1955. I bought it on the strength of my first pay cheque when I started out in the real estate game.Paid fifty quid for it. Gave it a respray, steam cleaned the engine, sold it on to a classic car collector for three hundred. That's business. And with that three hundred, I bought a 1966 Ford Anglia 1200. Put on some wide wheels and a fibre glass spoiler, retuned the carburettor, put a hole in the silencer to make it sound throaty. Next thing you know, some boy racer's paying me seven hundred — which led on to a Ford Zodiac, the Triumph 2000 automatic, the Vauxhall Ventura 3.3 litre ...Terry: It was the early seventies. I was doing well, getting good money, but it was hard work.Grant to Phil on pulling scams: Remember what our old man used to say about doing it on our own doorstep?Grant: Do you remember when the old man was away and Mum sent for Granddad because she caught us trying to do the gas metre? We sat there, knowing he was on his way.Phil: And when he got there, what was it he said?Grant and Phil adopting an Irish accent in unison: "You're neither use nor flaming ornament, the pair of you!"Grant: Didn't half give us a good old whack though, didn't he?Phil: I got the worst of it.Grant: Oh yeah. Well, you were old enough to know better, weren't you? I was just a baby.Phil: Yeah, but you was always bigger than me.Alfie: Nana was always good at getting the truth out of us. It was like torture. She'd sit you down and she'd get her little peepers on you and say, "Alfie,is there anything you want to share with me?" Even I couldn't tell porkies under them conditions.Alfie on his cousin Maxwell: He never could keep a secret.Grant on himself and Phil: We [were] just a couple of kids trying their luck.Phil: I never meant it to go this far.Peggy: That's the story of your life, isn't it? Even when you and Grant were kids and I had the police on the doorstep - "It was never meant to go that far".Grant on social workers: We had enough of those to last a lifetime when we were kids. They were all for Phil, of course.Peggy on her children: My lot used to keep me up all night.Eddie Moon to his sons: The minute you lot were born, every single one of you, that’s when the worry started.Derek Branning: Michael Moon, born to lose.Peggy to Grant: It was always you I was more worried about. I always thought you needed Phil to look out for you.Phil: Grant would do anything for a dare as a kid, especially if it involved taking his clothes off. He was always a bit of a nutter.Grant: Sometimes I can't cope. I get this rush to my head. I've had it ever since I was a kid. I go mad for a couple of seconds, I get all confused, I hit out, I hurt people.Nigel: Phil always used to say that Grant would kill someone one day.Anne Howes: Have you always looked after [Grant]?Phil: Yeah, sort of.Phil: I've spent my whole life running after you, picking up the pieces.Grant: Yeah well, I never asked you to.Phil: And you never stopped me either, did you? You're happy to have someone clear up the mess. You've never given a toss about me.Grant: Me and Phil would get Mum to buy us a tennis racket every summer. We'd play with it for a couple of weeks, then end up batting each other over the head with it.Phil: Grant used to have a Doberman he used to take to school.Phil on resuscitating a newborn puppy: I saw the old man do it a few times with the greyhounds.Nigel: My dad was good at dogs. Ran them, bred them. We always had dogs when we was kids.Phil on himself: Saved a dog from being run over once.Heather Trott: I always wanted a dog but, you know, they make me sneeze and Mummy said I’d never be able to look after one.Billy on Digby, the Biggest Dog in the World: I loved that film when I was little.Heather: I never saw films as a kid.Billy on Bambi: I cried at that one. Had to be taken home.Billy: 1984 [by George Orwell]. We done it in English.Honey Mitchell (née Edwards): You’re not thick, Billy.Billy: Well, that’s what the other kids at school called me.Zainab Masood: Fractions, I was good at those at school.Manda Best: “It is the very error of the moon,She comes more nearer earth than she was wontAnd makes men mad.”Shakespeare. Othello, O Level English. Mrs Haines used to give us a lollipop for every quote we remembered.Shirley Carter on Waiting for Godot: It’s a play that they made us do at school — two blokes waiting for another one to turn up.Vinnie Monks: And did he?Shirley: I think so, yeah. I don’t know. I bunked off the last week.Shirley: All kids bunk off now and again. I mean, I did it. Don’t tell me that Carol [Jackson] never had a visit from the wag man.Nigel on his toy hare: [I had it] since I was twelve. A family heirloom. It got stolen at my birthday party years ago.Paul Trueman to his brother Anthony: What a naughty boy you used to be.Audrey Trueman on Paul: Where did that sweet little boy go?Patrick Trueman, mid-anecdote: So the wife call out, "That's right - kick down the door!" So what I do? I had no choice - I kick down the door!Paul: I was thinking about Dad, all the happy memories I've got when I was little with him. Can't remember a single one with her [Audrey].Patrick to Paul: Your mother wasn't an easy woman, you know. For all the pictures of Jesus she had on the wall, man, she had a heart of stone.Zoe Slater: How old were you when they [Patrick and Audrey] split up?Anthony Trueman: About two, I think.Paul: Me and my brother, we were barely out of nappies when our [father] went AWOL.Patrick on Audrey: Chucked me out on the street like a dog.Paul: You walked out on us because you wanted to.Patrick: No, man, no. Nothing in this life is quite so simple, son. It wasn't just me alone, son. That is how Audrey wanted it too.Pat Evans, speaking in 2001: How long is it since you've seen these two?Patrick: The boys? Thirty years.Patrick to Anthony: I left you when you was a baby and it was a terrible thing.Patrick to Paul: She [Audrey] could be a hard woman, you know. I mean, she tell me, she say I must keep away from you and Anthony so that all you don't grow up to be like me. So I said to meself, "Just walk away, man. Let Audrey and the boys get on with their life. Don't interfere, don't divide the children's loyalties and maybe in time ..."Patrick: I was robbed of me sons.Patrick: I should never have left Audrey alone to bring up the both of you.Paul: No you shouldn't have. I used to think it was my fault that you left us. Stupid or what? We thought you were dead.Patrick: It's nothing you did, son. It was me.Patrick: I wasn’t exactly a hands on parent, a casualty of being a seaman I guess.Heather: I bet they looked up to their dad though.Patrick: I walked out on them, Heather. What was there to look up to?Patrick: I was pretty selfish, always looking out for Number One. I was no role model - walking out on the boys. I let Paul down when it counted.Milton Hibbert to Patrick: You couldn't wait to see the back of Audrey and the boys, and that's when you thought they were both your sons Paul on Patrick: That's why he left us when we were kids, because he knew [he wasn't my father], like I knew, deep down.Patrick on Audrey: I left that woman to bring up two young boys on she own. Left she without a care in the world.Patrick: I was just a young fool, you know, just out to have a good time.Anthony on Patrick: He walked out on my mother when I was just a baby. She’s the one that brought us up. She’s the one that juggled three jobs and still somehow managed to get us to school on time, and where was Patrick? Patrick wasn’t there.Patrick on Audrey: I did write to her, but the letters kept coming back unopened. And there was a cheque in every one of them. After a while, I just gave up. She was a good woman, but forgiveness came hard to her.</blockquote>

Verification: Who played JR Ewing?