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Message: <blockquote data-quote="James from London" data-source="post: 118046" data-attributes="member: 22">1977Charlie Slater, speaking in 2002: I've been driving [taxis] twenty-five years.Big Mo: The black cab drivers' do — all the girls wear bright colours. They all get dolled up. I can remember my Viv — always wore fuchsia pink. She loved it. She used to show them what's what.Little Mo: ‘Chanson D'Amour’ was my mum's favourite record.Phil, speaking to Faith Olunbumbi in 2011: When I was your age [sixteen], if I’d [defaced] somebody else’s property, I’d get a good hiding and count meself lucky if I got away without any broken bones.Charlie Cotton Jr on Nick: He never settled on the outside. He kept getting into trouble, letting [Mum] down and one day, he was off.Yvonne to Charlie: Your father left and I was on my own.Yvonne: Since then, it’s just been me and Charlie. It’s always just been me and him.Yvonne to Charlie: Nick screwed your life up.Cora Cross to her daughter Rainie: That was my first mistake - begatting you.Big Mo: Motherhood rots your brain. Remember our Vivienne? Three babies in seven years. Never got a word of sense out of her all through the 1970s.Big Mo on Viv: She didn’t take advice.Jean Slater: Viv never really liked me. She was strong, I was weak. She always knew what she was doing. I was always dithering. A clever lady andcapable. She was the rock of your family. I always wanted to be like her. Viv always knew the right thing to say, the right thing to do.Charlie Slater: Could have a tongue on her though.Jean: She was always fair, though. I mean if she gave you a tongue lashing it’s because you deserved it.Billy Mitchell: You and Viv, how did you manage to cope so well? Big family, lots of kids, it must have been a struggle when they was young.Charlie: Yeah it was. It was really hard sometimes, but you know what? I wouldn’t change one single day of it.Billy: Not even the bad times?Charlie: Especially them. They’re the ones that tested you, a bit of fire.Vanessa Gold: If you could do it all over again, would you do anything differently?Eddie Moon: Everything.Vanessa: It can’t have been all bad.Eddie: Well, maybe just the bad bits then.Vanessa: A few of those, were there?Eddie: Just a few.Michael Moon on his mother: I remember her chasing mice round the flat with my cricket bat, screaming her head off. Even now when I smell her perfume, I'm right back there, sitting on her lap, listening to her sing Clash records. “I want a riot” - she loved that song.Eddie: Yeah. She smashed up our radio because the DJ spoke over the start of it.Yvonne Cotton on Nick: All my friends thought he looked like Joe Strummer.Dot: Who?Yvonne: From the Clash.Billy Mitchell: Do you know who Joe Strummer was?Lola Pearce, Billy’s granddaughter: No, who’s that?Billy: He was a legend.Billy: When I was a kid, I had a goldfish called Strummer. I used to dream of getting him [an aquarium-sized] tank.Michael on his mother: I remember her helping me get worms for my fishing.Eddie: It wasn’t her who dug the worms out of the mud. It was me, Michael. I used to take you fishing down the canal.Michael: I remember the fishing in the canal.Buster Briggs: Caught a shark once. Big thing it was. I’d have reeled it in and all if it hadn’t bit through the line.Carol Jackson on her baby: Everybody said I should get rid of it. I had to fight to be allowed to have my baby.Carol: I kept it, David. Don't ask me why. I just did.David Wicks: You didn't ask me. You didn't even have the courtesy to let me know.Carol: I should have told you, but I didn't know how to say it.Carol to Bianca: I chose at fifteen to keep you. I was at the clinic, David's sweaty money in my hand, ready to pay up and get on with my life, but Ididn't. Why, I don't know - because I felt I was wrong, because I felt I was to blame in some way - I was stupid enough to get myself pregnant, I had to see it through. The story of my life, finishing off jobs I should never have started. I had a child in there and I needed to protect it. I signed my life away.Jean Slater: I’m not wanted — the story of my life.Charlie Slater on Kat: Story of her life — things not working out.Eddie: “Only Eddie” — the story of my life!Carol: Same story my whole life — one big hamster wheel round and round till you drop off.David: Have you ever had an abortion, Mum?Pat Butcher: What kind of a question's that? No, of course I haven't.Natalie Price to her mother Andrea: I can't help it if I was a mistake.Andrea Price: They said the second one would just fly out. It's no joke having a thirty-six hour labour.Andrea: You're the reason I lost my figure.Natalie: Mum, loads of women have two children close together.Andrea: It's just having two kids in two years didn't help any. I got stretch marks. It put your dad right off. You can't be a cabaret singer if you've got a stone full of flab to shift. Losing my figure cost me my career and my husband.Natalie: Well, if I made you so unattractive, how come Dad stuck around to have Jack?Andrea: Biding his time until someone better looking came along.Dot Cotton: I wish there’d still been National Service when my Nick was eighteen.Dot: Do you remember the Silver Jubilee? That was a lovely day.Pauline Fowler: We had a street party.Dot: People brought what they got, we all shared. Arthur did that treasure hunt for the children and everyone was getting tiddly on Ethel's punch.Pauline: We had that big table all round the Square.Dot: Oh, them table cloths. Sixteen loads. I had service washes backed up for days.Kat Slater: I had a great aunt once who had chronic constipation and she spent fifty years on the throne!Glenda Mitchell to Ronnie: Your Aunty Peg swears blind that me and your dad were at this boxing do in Romford in July 1977 and I know for a fact that we were in Marbella.Eddie to Michael: That club I used to train in, you hated that place.Michael Moon: Cooper Hall [a boxing venue] over Bethnal Green. Like our front room, weren’t it, Dad?Ava Hartman: I wanted to be a tennis player [when I was twelve].Ava: I don’t think I even thought about boys at [that] age.PC Jenkins, speaking in 2015: Please state your name and date of birth for the tape.Linda: Linda Carter, July 1st 1977.Carol: I didn't exactly have it easy. I had to leave school and have a newborn baby. When she was born, everybody said, "Oh, you got to get her adopted." I had to fight every inch of the way to keep my daughter. Nobody knows what it was like for me, the decisions I had to make. I was a kid.Pat: I do, Carol. I was there, remember? Yes, you had it hard and it wasn't fair.Carol, speaking in 2013: I’ve survived childbirth and God knows how many Royal Variety Performances — I think I can cope.Carol to Bianca: You were two weeks late, and I tell you, every day past that due date felt like a year. I thought you was never going to come out.Bianca Jackson: Yeah, but you was glad when I did though, weren't you?Carol: You know I was.Derek Branning to Bianca: I was there when you were born — not your granddad, not your grandma, not your dad — me, your Uncle Derek, and when she [Carol] first held you in her arms, she was the most radiant creature I’d ever seen. She loved you then.Carol on Bianca: A little freckly face. My little girl.Carol to Bianca: The only mistake I ever made was having you. I should never have bothered and then life would have been a lot happier for us all.Max Branning: You always did like fighting dirty, didn’t you, Carol?Carol: Mouth first, brain later. I've always been the same.Bianca: My mum was so young when she had me. She must have been really scared.Carol: I was fourteen years old. I should have been thinking about me O Levels and going out with me mates, not changing dirty nappies. I gave up my future for my child. I did everything for that girl.Carol on Bianca: I hoped for a daughter that loved me, that wouldn’t rip my heart out.Carol to Bianca: I spent years scraping around, struggling to bring you up. It was me that brought you up, me that fed and clothed you, me that went out to work all the hours God sent just to make ends meet, me that gave up everything.Carol to Bianca: I gave up everything for you. I gave up my youth, my freedom, my ambitions.Carol: I was a failure when I was pregnant with you at fourteen.Bianca: Me dad walked out you, your family tell you not to have me but you do, you’re fourteen — that ain’t a failure, that’s brave.Bianca to Carol: Mum, since you were fifteen you’ve just looked after me my whole life.Bianca: You've always worked. I've never known you not to.Carol: Yeah. When you were first born, I used to take you with me. I was an usherette at the pictures. The lady in the box office used to have you in your carry cot on the floor while I collected the tickets.Bianca: Didn't they mind?Carol: No. Trouble was I never got to see any of the films. I always had to come and feed you.Bianca: Sorry.Carol: I didn't care.Carol: I never wanted Bianca to find out about [her paternity] and I really tried to protect her from it all.Jim Branning: Carol was a kid herself when she had Bianca so she's the only [grandchild] I've really known since a baby. She's always been my favourite.Pauline: Did Pete not know he had a grandchild?Carol: No.Pauline: He always wanted a granddaughter.Den Watts: Sharon always wanted a brother.Den: I always wanted a son, even had a picture in me head of what he'd look like, sitting on me shoulders watching football, rolling on the ground, picking him up from his first day at school.Dennis Rickman: I had the same pictures.Den: I never ever saw a picture of Dennis as a baby, never held him, never bought him any toys, and I'm not saying I would have been the greatest father, but maybe I wouldn't have minded finding out.Dennis to Den: Are you sure you didn't know about me? It's just she [Paula] always said you did and it was because of me, me being like I am, that you weren't around.Den: It sounds as if your mum might have had a few problems.Dennis: Yeah — me.Jay Brown: Christie Malone — he was a decent fighter. He was from round here [Walford].Phil Mitchell: We used to fight as amateurs together.Jay: Did you fight him?Phil: I knocked him out.Jay: How old were you when you knocked out Christie Malone?Phil: About your age [sixteen]. A week after I put his lights out, a scout from the ELC, that’s the ...Jay: East London Championships.Phil: Yeah, that’s right. He come down to Walford and, well, I broke me hand. So Christie got the nod instead of me.Jay: So if you hadn’t have broke your hand ...Phil: We’ll never know, will we?Phil: [The real reason] Christie Malone got scouted instead of me [is because] Mum and Dad, they were away at Butlin’s with Aunt Sal, Grant was with the cadets and none of me mates were going to championships, and the truth is I didn’t want to go on me own. I bottled it. I did break me hand but not until the day after. I just used that as an excuse.Masood Ahmed: AJ saw “Star Wars” seventeen times.Tamwar: Seventeen times?AJ Ahmed: That was just the cinema release.Masood Ahmed: I was the only one who wanted to be Luke Skywalker. Everyone else wanted to be Han Solo. He was the coolest one.Zainab Masood: My first kiss was a poster of [film star] Santosh Kumar and all I’ve thought ever since was, “I bet he tastes of paper.”Alfie Moon on ‘Wonder Woman’: I remember that, Saturday nights back in the day. I used to watch both of them.Ian Beale: Remember that "Star Wars" do we has as kids? You sat [upstairs at the Vic], crying in your Princess Leia outfit.Sharon Watts: It was only because Mark Fowler was playing with me buns. Took Mum ages to get that hair right.Ian: You sat up here crying your eyes out. Your dad came up here, sat down, cuddled you, talked it through with you. Then he carried you downstairs, didn't he?Sharon, looking at a photo of Den: I took this one with the camera he gave me for me eighth birthday.Sharon on Tenerife: It's where Mum and Dad used to take me when I was a kid. It was perfect for us three. We had a great time playing on the beach. Dad couldn't get me out the sea because I liked it so much, and they were nice to each other for a change. It's the best holiday we ever had.Dennis, looking at Sharon's old holiday photos: Is that you? What are you wearing?!Sharon: Dad made me wear a T-shirt in case I got sunburn.Dennis: Very flattering! [On another photo:] Now that's more like it, quite a movie star!Sharon: That's us admiring Dad's sandcastle. It's supposed to be the Queen Vic. Mum thought he was mad.Heather Trott: When I was a kid, I used to stand outside the travel agents looking in at those big posters of blue sea and white sand and I’d imagine I was there.Garry Hobbs: I used to go to the seaside every weekend in the summer when I was a kid.Den: All those customised watches in the back of the car, eh? Cost me ten bob a time, they did.Angie Watts: Ten bob? You told me fifteen! You took my post office savings, you crafty so and so.Den: All those automatic watches in the back of the car, all wound up from the vibrations. Then we broke down. That guy stuck his head in the window. "Can I help you, sir?"Angie: He kept sticking his head in the window. There was five hundred of them, all ticking away.Den, adopting an Irish accent: "Is it possible to tell us the time, to be sure?" And he still didn't tumble.Eric "Chalky" Whiting: You always sailed a bit close to the wind, Den.Pete: Old Eric Whiting. He used to run the Duke of York's before Fat Harry took over.Chalky to Den: All you've ever cared about is looking after Number One.Den: I didn't hear you complain when I put those trannies your way. And that's just for starters. How about when I tipped you off about the Weights and Measures, eh? Remember when you sold the Duke of York's? Remember who taught you how to fiddle the books so you could get a better price?Chalky: Angie.Den: Yeah, but it was my idea.Chalky: And as I remember, you insisted on a cut.Den: You didn't do too badly out of it yourself.Kim Fox, Denise’s sister: I was born with the looks. Dee got the brains.Denise on Kim: She’s always had a very overactive imagination.Kim: It don’t matter where you come from. With class, you’ve either got it or you ain’t. Me and Denise, we’ve always had it. Innit, Dee?Kim on Denise: She always had good taste — ish.Denise Fox: You are our mother's daughter.Kim: Thanks.Denise: That ain’t a compliment.Kim: Me and Dee, we weren’t that close to our mum.Denise: Speak for yourself.Kat Slater on her sister, Little Mo: I've known that girl since the day she was born and she has never lifted a finger to hurt anyone.Big Mo to Little Mo: Your mother used [baby paracetamol] and you used to guzzle it down.Charlie Slater: All my girls had [green poo]. Babies’ poo changes [colour] all the time. Little Mo went through the rainbow.Kat: I cleaned the inside of Dad's cab once.Kat: Here Dad, remember that time when it was Mum's birthday and we all went out in the cab and you picked that bloke up and took him to Euston just because it was on the way?Charlie Slater: Well I had to get some money to pay for the dinner, didn't I?Kevin Wicks: I’ve done it large up west more times than I want to remember.Kathy Beale to Pete: Do you remember the night when you, me, Den and Angie went up west for a night out? We went up in your old van. There was me and Angie all dolled up. We were sitting on a bag of spuds and a net of onions.Pete: Oh yeah. Just after Den done one of them dodgy deals of his.Kathy: And we ended up in that posh restaurant. Remember that doorman?Pete: Oh yeah, and he had that big waxed moustache. He looked like a sergeant major. His boat race when you and Angie got out the back door!Kathy: Yeah, me stinking of onions.Pete: And Denny said, "There you are, my man", and gave him a stick of celery for a tip.Kathy: And Angie said, "I hope it's warm in there, young man, because I forgot to put my knickers on." Here, do you remember, Den started chatting to one of them waitresses?Pete: I also remember you and Angie was chatting up them waiters. All three of you were chatting up. I sat there like a right lemon. And didn't your one take it serious? Try to talk you into taking him out later?Kathy: My hero here. You went and thumped him, didn't you? He ended up on his bum. I remember we was asked to leave.Pete: Angie said I was a spoil sport. Fancied you, that fella.Kathy: Yeah well, I didn't fancy him, did I? Greasy git.Kathy on her brother Ted and "Uncle" Jimmy: The last time I saw these two together, they were betting on who could drink the most neat gin without being sick.Jimmy Doyle: Which I won, of course. And Edward here had to drag me the entire length of the East India Dock Road singing "Danny Boy".Ted Hills: I was stitched up.Jimmy: No, it was a fair bet. If he'd won, I [would have] had to eat fifty boiled eggs, like in that film. That's why I didn't feel guilty about making him pay his bet.Alfie Moon: "Cool Hand Luke", Paul Newman — I wanted to be him.Ted: If it hadn't have been for Jimmy, I could have ended up in nick or at the bottom of the canal. He stuck by me and my business through a lot of very hard times. We've been through a lot together. Whenever there was any trouble on the site, he was there. He's even gone without wages when times were hard.Ted: We did a job together some years ago.Kathy: What sort of job?Ted: Don't matter. Jimmy got two years. I walked — because Jimmy kept his mouth shut.Ted to Jimmy: You could have grassed on me, but you didn't. You spent two years of your life banged up.Irene Hills on her children: When they were little, we were too tired to enjoy it. I always told myself, "One day, there'll be other chances. One day, I'll have grandchildren."Irene on Ted: He used to blame me for this sort of thing [the fridge not being defrosted]. Never lifted a finger himself.Maureen Carter, Irene's aunt: [Irene] was never a natural when it comes to housework.Big Mo: Viv, she loved a clean and tidy house.Glenda Mitchell: I was always hopeless in the kitchen.Archie Mitchell: I never really got into the housekeeping thing meself.Dot: My Charlie, he hated washing up. Said it was woman's work.Dan Sullivan: My old man never cooked anything.Lofty Holloway: My dad never did a stroke around the house. He was the breadwinner and me mum just washed net curtains day in, day out. Inside, she was all twisted up and discontent. You could see it. It was horrible.Trevor Morgan: My mother died when I was eleven. I never had a family.Alfie: My mum always used to make tea [in times of crisis]. No one ever drank it. She used to make it, leave it there for an hour, then pour it down thesink and start all over again. God, it was right horrible tea it was.Heather: Mummy used to make me gargle with salt water.Pat Wicks: Didn't bring my two up, they did it themselves. Couldn't stand either of them till they were fourteen, going on fifteen.Simon Wicks on his childhood: I never remember being hungry and I never remember not being loved.Pat to Simon: It was me giving hell down the police station that time they pulled you in and you'd done nothing. You were pleased enough to have me around then, all right. That teacher who kept picking on you soon stopped after I sorted her out.Pat: I lost count of the amount of times I had to see the headmaster over my two about one thing or another.Shirley Carter: I was always in trouble at school. I swore when I left school, I’d never set foot in one again.Simon: I had some childhood, I did. All right, so they looked after me, but me stepdad - it was like living with a nutter. I used to have this picture in me room, right, a shipwreck. I used to pretend that him and Mum had drowned. See that way, I could imagine the sort of parents that I wanted, the sort of father who'd come and make things right instead of just rowing all the time. Mum and him played every game there was. Rules weren't in it. Me and my brother were just ammunition for them. I learned a lot.Pat to Simon: You've called [Brian Wicks] "stepfather" all your life, only he wasn't.Simon: I used to feel sorry for my stepfather. My mum wasn't any more faithful to him than she was to Pete. There were always fellas hanging around. I hated it.David Wicks to Pat: You were married and obsessed at the same time. Remember how you used to sneak off to see Frank?Ricky Butcher: All the years I was growing up, you and Dad were —Pat: Off and on, yes. I knew it was wrong, Ricky. I knew it was killing the rest of my life, but I could sooner have stopped breathing than stopped seeing Frank. That was just something on the side. He'd never have left you lot. God knows I asked him often enough.David on Frank: He was the only person that she ever really loved.Carol Jackson: She loved her kids.David: No.Pat: I got [two] failed marriages behind me and each one started the same way, passionately. They started the same way and they ended the same way, in disaster. I was so lonely after [each] of them.Simon: [Pat and Brian] might have had things going on, but they managed to keep a good atmosphere.Pat: I always liked Kevin [Wicks, Brian’s nephew]. He was a good laugh.Simon: We used to have this Social Studies teacher at school. He had long ginger hair tied back in a ribbon. He manicured his nails and kept his money in a pink leather purse. He was drunk most of the time so we used to call him Ethelred the Unsteady, on account of his leanings.Nigel Bates: I had this science teacher, Mr Bunky. Real stickler, he was. Bad case of dandruff. Always wore the same old pair of corduroy trousers. Bunky Burner, we used to call him. Bunky Burner, bunsen burner - get it?Heather Trott: I was never any good at science.Heather: I failed French at school. I kept getting “he” muddled up with “she” and “you” muddled up with me.Nana Moon: Do you remember that con you did when you were a boy?Alfie: Which one?Nana: The bike one.Alfie: The one with the pretend puncture? That was a good one.Nana: Well, it was a good one until that teacher came along that you had a crush on. And do you know? All the patter, all the front, they all fell away. We could see straight through you.Nigel on his female teachers: All I ever got were spindly old bags with greasy hair and a bad case of dandruff.Peggy Mitchell: Minty, you've always been very loyal to this family.Phil Mitchell: What about the time your girlfriend dyed your hair blond and it all went green?Minty Peterson: Yeah, and I had to wear that stupid woolly hat all through the summer until it grew out. I looked a right plonker.Phil: Did she ever pass her hairdressing exams?Minty: I don't know. She dumped me. Cheek, eh?Rod Norman: I had [pink hair] when I was at school. When I wanted to go a gig, I had to con the old lady I was going up the Festival Hall, you know, classical and that. Had a mate who worked there, used to nick me the programmes. Poor cow, must have come as an awful shock when she finally twigged.Minty on “Rumours” by Fleetwood Mac: I liked it when it first come out.Adam Best: I suppose you can’t deny its appeal in populist subculture but it didn’t really challenge the status quo, did it?Minty: No - not after “Rockin’ All Over the World” anyway.Nigel: I remember the first time I heard ["Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft" by The Carpenters]. I was trying to snog Maureen Prescott at the time. You remember her — braces on her teeth, big girl. Lovely mother.Grant Mitchell: Oh yeah, I remember. I tried to date her once.Nigel: What, Maureen?Grant: No, her mother.Nigel: You old devil. Kept that quiet.Nigel: My love life as a teenager was a total disaster. Phil: The longest you went out with a girl was three weeks.Grant: There was Sue from Hornchurch with the legs.Phil: You started going out with her on Halloween and she chucked you on Bonfire Night.Archie Mitchell: I used to love Halloween — carving lanterns, apple bobbing, telling scary stories to the kids.Ronnie Mitchell: You were good at that.Ronnie on ‘The Tiger Who Came to Tea’: That used to be my favourite [book] when I was little.Grant to Phil: Debbie Smith, do you remember her? I'd just started going out with her and you said she came onto you. You said she was begging for it. You told me about it, we fronted her. Made her look a right prat.Phil: Yeah.Minty on Phil: Always did have a way with the ladies.Phil: I was brought up to kick the crap out of anyone who even looked at his bird in the wrong way.Phil: My old man used to say to me, "Never fight over women. Can get to be a habit."Alfie: "Treat 'em mean, keep 'em keen" - that's what Dad used to say anyway. He didn't always get it right.Grant: What did the old man say? If someone's beating the crap out of you, you just cut your losses and run like hell.Phil: Yeah, and he also said wait for them the next day with a ruddy big stick.Archie, speaking to Jack Branning in 2009: When I was your age [thirty-seven], I was out enjoying every minute.</blockquote>

Verification: Who played Sue Ellen in Dallas?