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Message: <blockquote data-quote="James from London" data-source="post: 118705" data-attributes="member: 22">1982Charlie Slater, sitting in Walford Job Centre in 2002: It's more than twenty odd years since I was here last. It was all grey then.Jean Slater: Twenty-five — I remember being that age. You’ve got so much to look forward to.Jean: These hands were soft once.Tina Stewart: I was working in a local supermarket when I was seventeen. I never expected to be a kept woman.Tina: You should have seen me behind the counter of the local supermarket — black shoes, regulation nylon overall that gave you a static shock every time you touched a teaspoon.Ruby Allen: What made you want to work there?Tina: Needed the money.Ruby: And you never fancied college or something?Tina: No. It wasn't an option. My mum wasn't very well when my little brother and sister were small so I did most of it.Ruby: So you earned the money and brought the kids up?Tina: Yeah, I suppose so.Ruby: Must have been tough.Tina: You don't really think of it like that. You just get on and do the business. Then of course, I struck lucky and got a job as a waitress.Ruby: That's lucky?Tina: Yeah — working nights, three times the money plus tips, and I got to do a bit of singing now and then.Ruby: What sort of stuff?Tina: Nightclub stuff — you know, smoochy ballads, mainstream — but I did get to sing a bit of Nina Simone now and then. Trouble is, people don't really want to come to a nightclub and cry into their glasses of champagne, do they?Babe to Mick: We got you back out of care.Shirley to Mick: I did everything I could to get you back.Babe: Shirley’s right. She hounded the social services. We both did. She was only a teenager herself. I was with Shirl every step of the way.Mick: When I came home, it wasn’t things I remember, I just remember how I felt. Because when you’re a kid and you wake up in the middle of the night and there’s no-one there, you just remember feeling scared. And when you’re sitting out on the step and you’re freezing in the sleet, you don’t remember the colour of the door, you just remember thinking, “Why doesn’t he [Stan] know — why doesn’t he know I’m hungry? Why doesn’t he know that school’s finished? Why doesn’t he know?” I’m six years old. Stan to Mick: When you was young, when you was growing up, I wasn’t there for you, none of you.Tina on Shirley: She’s been there for us, Mick, through everything. She’s fought for us. You can’t say she ain’t.Babe to Mick: [Shirley] looked after you. She was mother to you and Tina and she did a good job.Shirley on Mick: I brought him up.Tina on Shirley: She brought me up, you know.Mick: She did a great job. As soon as she could slip off, she did and left us with him [Stan].Stan Carter: We was always patching up your face.Mick: “We”? You were never there.Mick to Stan: You taught me everything I know [about tough love].Mick: I don’t do friction. I had enough of that with the old man.Mick on Stan: I’ve never seen him do fear, never.Mick on Stan: A complete wrong 'un.Mick: I hated on my old man for years.Stan to Mick: Hating me was the one thing in life you could count on, like British summers or Aunt Babe’s trifles.Babe: Top of the milk?Tina: We could never afford cream so Aunt Babe …Babe: Make do and mend. Use the bit that rises to the top of the bottle.Lorraine Wicks: I knew the moment I saw Karen [on a pregnancy scan] that she was a girl.Karen Louise Wicks born 13th February 1982.Clare Bates on Karen: Was she pretty?Lorraine: Yeah. Yeah, she was.Jake Moon: I can remember as kids playing catch, Alfie was never happy unless he was “it”.Nana Moon: That's because he was interested in the girls.Tanya Branning on playing hopscotch: We used to have a rhyme for this, didn’t we? What was it?Lorraine “Rainie” Cross, Tanya’s sister: She [Tanya] always cheated at games.Tanya: You’re such a liar.Rainie: We were having a rollerskating race once. She knew I’d beat her so she nicked my skate.Tanya: No, I didn’t nick that one actually.Rainie: What, it just magically appeared on top of the wardrobe, did it?Ronnie Mitchell on Roxy: She always used to [cheat at cards] when we were kids —  didn’t you, eh? You used to slap your fat sweaty mitt all the over the pack so no-one could see whether it was a snap at all.Andrew Cotton: I was always the last one to get picked for sports at school.Derek Branning on Max and Jack: I’ve been watching them [play football] since they were knee-high. Their little legs ...Suzy Branning: Remember when you two used to play football in the street?Max: Yeah, I was always Arsenal. [Jack] would always be who’d ever won the cup or something.Jack: No I wasn’t.Max: Yes you were, glory boy — Man U, Chelsea, whoever it was.Jack: No, I’ve always supported West Ham just like Dad.Jack Branning on Derek: He never did play football as a kid, did he?Max Branning: No, he had a club foot.Derek: I didn’t have a club foot, I had fallen arches.Jack: You had special heels in the back of your shoes!Derek: They were corrective shoes and I only wore them for six months!Jake: I used to play football. I got a knee injury.Jake: Football — we went around pretending we were Geoff Hurst or Bobby Moore. Who did Alfie pick? Tony White.Nana Moon: Who?Jake: Exactly. He never even made the Hammers first team. Inferiority complex, see.Alfie Moon: When I was eighteen, I could say anything to anybody.Alfie to his brother Spencer: When I was [eighteen], we used to do this thing called Three Steps Below. It's all about levels of attractiveness so it's marks out of ten. Let's just say you're an eight — by you being an eight, you need to chat up a bird who's a five. It's the natural order of things because you know a five, because she's got to be a bit of a bow wow, there is no way she's going to turn down an eight. You pull a five, you know she is so coming back to your place, dead cert. (Whatever you do, don't tell Nana because Granddad was a nine.)Spencer Moon to Alfie: When you were younger, you went places. You saw things, you did things.Maxwell Moon to Alfie: He weren't about that much. He was always off, running about with his gang.Maxwell to Alfie: You missed my twenty-first.Alfie: This lad I knew, Eric his name was, lived up our street and he was a bit of a nutter. Always the first up the chicken run at Upton Park. He'd give you a smack in the gob as soon as look at you. Right nutcase he was. Anyway, we didn't see him for about a year. One day, me and my mates were in this boozer in Hackney and there's Eric. He's up onstage, right, dressed as Shirley Bassey, giving it large in the gold lamé thing. "Goldfinger", "Hey Big Spender" — you name it, he was murdering it. Now this Eric, right, he was so butch, but he'd gone right through it and come out the other side — seriously, he'd been hiding it for years — from Arthur to Martha. Once he realised we weren't going to judge him, he dropped all the manly act and you know what? I've never seen a bloke so happy.Derek Harkinson: What happened to Eric?Alfie: He had to move away. Not everybody's so open-minded, you see. What happened, his boss found out, stirred things up and got him the sack. His boss was the old school type. Made Hitler look broad-minded.Alan Jackson: When I was at school, there was this lad. He got a bit confused [about his sexuality]. He didn't know which way to turn. At first he went this way, then he went that way and in the end, he turned the wrong way. Then nobody wanted to know him after that. But really, he was just a bit confused.Max: I had this mate. Jim didn’t approve, he gave me a hard time about it.Tanya: Why didn’t he approve?Max: Because he was black. Jim and his pals, they didn’t like one of their own having a black mate. They told me to dump him. I said no. One night we were walking home. It was dark. Five of them jumped out of nowhere, beat him to a pulp in front of me. Police got involved. I was told to keep my mouth shut. I said no, told Jim if I wanted to squeal, I would.Tanya: And did you?Max: No, but they didn’t know that. One of them, he had this undertakers. It was my birthday.Max to Jim: What you laid on for my thirteenth birthday, I can still taste that stale air.Max: They all turned up in the middle of the night and grabbed me, took me there, back of this car, gagged. Stuck me in a coffin. “We’re gonna bury you,” they said. “No one’s ever going to know.” They tried to hold me down. I fought and I fought, just trying to stop them putting the lid on. Jim was just the other side of the room. I could see him there, just watching. I was begging him, “Dad.” I was crying, “Dad, Dad,” but he didn’t do anything, he just — didn’t move. He just stood there, quaking in his boots. And then the lid went down. Pitch black, it was. I can still hear the sound of them turning the screws, locking me in. The coffin was moved. It was lifted up, it was stuck in the back of a hearse. Dumped. I can still hear the sound of them shovelling on the earth. I was begging them, I was screaming, I was crying. It just went all quiet. They’d gone. And I just lay there all night, thinking I was going to die. Minute after minute, in the dark, not able to move, I just ... just seeing Jim’s face, looking at me.Derek Branning: You remember the coffin, Maxy boy? Do you remember the night in the coffin? Dad’s friend, the undertaker? I did that to you. ME. To show you who’s boss.Max: In the morning, the lid was ripped off. The coffin hadn’t even moved. It was still in the undertakers. They's just left me there all night, gone to the pub, gone home, slept like babies. I could hardly walk. Jim tried to help me, I refused. That night, he came to my room. He’d been drinking. His face was as white as a sheet. He just wanted to say he was sorry. He’d wanted to stop them, but he was scared — scared, so scared that he’d let his ownson think he’d been buried alive. I didn’t get angry with him. I didn’t do anything. I just shut my bedroom door and lay alone in the darkness and I vowed I would never trust anyone again.Max: I was a kid, I was a little kid.Jim Branning: You was thirteen.Max: I was a kid and you abandoned me. You let your horrible seedy little mates screw with my head.Jim: No, no, no, no. That’s not true.Max: You were weak. I kept schtum. I’ve kept it inside all these years.Tanya on Max: A frightened lonely little boy, a frightened kid whose dad didn’t love him enough.Lauren Branning: Were [Tanya and her father] close?Cora Cross: Couldn't separate them.Ronnie Mitchell on Archie: He ruined my life.Max: But not Roxy’s?Ronnie: No. She was always Daddy’s little golden girl.Max: I never had you down as a black sheep. It’s lonely, isn’t it?Max on being the family black sheep: It’s lonely. However twisted and nasty my old man was, I still wanted him to love me, till one day there was too much to forgive. I realised how much I hated him. Still, it’s a lot to deal with on your own.Charlie Cotton Jr on his father: It doesn’t matter if you hate them at the same time as loving them, you just want them to notice you — or at least be grateful, just once. I wanted to do something to let him [Nick] see I was there. I used to love it when I heard him coming in the door. I’d think, “Ah, this time, it’ll be better. This time, he’ll be kind to her, he’ll be nice to Mum.”Ronnie: It never happens, does it?Max on whisky: I remember when I first tried that stuff. I was about [thirteen]. I drank half a bottle in one sitting. I was sick for two whole days. It was years before I could even smell the stuff again.Zainab Masood: I was forced into marriage.Zainab to Yusef Kahn, her first husband: I didn’t even know you. I didn’t even see you until the Nikah. You were a stranger.Zainab to Yusef’s daughter Afia: Your father and I, we were very young, too young. We never even had a mungni.Yusef to Zainab: That first day, both of us so shy.Zainab to Afia: The first time I actually saw your father was on our wedding day. His family had brought him over to my parents’ house. My mother told me not to look up from the floor, but of course I peeked a glance and he was just sitting there, just a boy, a child, really, like me, terrified.Zainab to Yusef: The first time I saw you, the very first time, we didn’t even talk. You just smiled, and I remember thinking, “What beautiful eyes. He must be kind with eyes like that.” "He’s a sweet boy. He’s going to be a doctor. He'll look after people.” That’s what people told me.Zainab on her wedding day: Yusef wore red and gold and he arrived on a white horse, and there were dancers and drummers.Yusef Kahn: It was cerise, wasn’t it?Zainab: What was?Yusef: Your dress at our wedding. I thought you were the most beautiful creature I’d ever seen.Yusef to Zainab: You [were] beautiful when we married in Pakistan. Those soulful eyes, all the wisdom and intelligence, love and honour shining through.Zainab on Yusef and his cousin Tariq: They were very close when we were first married.Tariq on Yusef: He married that disgrace of a woman.Masood Ahmed to Yusef: Your first pathetic marriage.Yusef: I fell in love with you that day.Zainab: We were children.Yusef: With hearts. I didn’t appreciate what love was when I was a boy.Yusef: Do you think I wanted a wife? I was more interested in playing cricket with my brother. I was seventeen. We were both children, both scared.Yusef: We were children forced together. Neither of us knew how to be, how to act. I tried to be what my father said I should be.Denise Fox on Zainab: Bet she was a right handful as a teenager.Yusef: Take what you’re thinking and multiply it by ten.Yusef to Zainab: You were fearless.Zainab to Yusef: You ruined my life.Zainab: I was a fifteen year old girl crying for her mother. I was terrified, sent away from everything that I knew to live with a total stranger and his family.Yusef: We loved each other.Zainab: No, no we didn’t. You were always a stranger, even when we were married.Yusef to Zainab: We weren't always strangers, were we? Those first few months, that guesthouse in the mountains away from the family, the first time I washed your back, undressing by candlelight, my fingers through your hair.Yusef to Zainab: I was a better man with you.Yusef to Zainab: You were the first person I knew to have a Walkman. Remember? We used to walk around with cases full of tapes.Yusef on ‘The Message’ by Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five: We thought we were so cool listening to this.Zainab: Our little rebellion.Yusef: On the Walkman, over and over again.Zainab: Sharing the headphones.Yusef: Cheek to cheek.Zainab: “Don’t push me ...”Yusef: “Cos I’m close to ...”Zainab: “The edge."Zainab: I was sixteen living in Pakistan.Zainab, talking about herself: She was happy at first. Her family were very kind to her and she spent most of her time in the kitchen, cooking.Yusef to Zainab: You always were a fantastic cook.Zainab: There was a book, a family heirloom.Shabnam Masood: A cook book?Zainab: "Masālē kī pustaka"Masood Ahmed: “The Book of Spices”.Zainab: It was full of the most amazing recipes, something for every mood, every occasion. I worshipped that book. I knew every single ingredient, every blend of spices, every tip on how to make each recipe nothing less than perfect.Zainab: One day, a young man came to the village visiting relatives.Masood to his son Tamwar: When I first saw your mum, it was like ...Masood to Zainab: You’ve been making my life a misery since the day I set eyes on you. And I wouldn’t have it any other way.Zainab: You were in love with the wrong girl once, remember?Masood: Ah, but she turned out to be the right one.Zainab: I was fifteen and I fell in love with a boy that wasn’t my husband and I’ve been haunted ever since.Masood: I’m not just a pretty face, darling.Zainab: He’s been telling me that since our first date!Yusef to Zainab: I did everything wrong and I drove you away into that man’s arms. It wasn’t our time together.Yusef: I allowed you to be stolen from me.Zainab: I wasn’t stolen. I knew what I was doing. I fell in love with Masood.Masood to Yusef: Zainab and I, I know we were young, but we did fall in love and stayed in love. I’m sorry she never felt like that about you, but you wouldn’t have been happy, either of you.Zainab, talking about herself and Masood: There was so much work to be done in the house that she found it difficult to see him, but she found a way. There were excuses, secret meetings. It was all very exciting. They were always careful, but someone must have seen them. A rumour started. That was enough. And then the family stopped her going out. She was like a prisoner. You see, everyone said that she had shamed the family.Shabnam: Because she fell in love?Zainab: There were rules, expectations. She broke them. I’m not saying I agree with it, but she should have known better. You can’t go against everything, everyone, stand alone.Yusef to Zainab: Have you forgotten the shame you brought on your family [by] having an affair - how lonely you felt, how desperate you were?Tariq, Yusef’s cousin, on Zainab: That woman brought disgrace and dishonour to our family.Yusef to Zainab: She shamed me. She shamed my family.Yusef, speaking to Masood in 2011: The shame and humiliation that you brought on my family. It didn’t even matter to them that I became a doctor or that I get married again or even have a beautiful daughter. They still won’t speak to me. But none of that compares to when I found out Zainab had been seeing you. Until then, those had been the happiest days of my life. That’s what turned to ash.Masood: It was never aimed at you.Masood: You made [Zainab’s] life hell.Yusef: You were the innocent? What good Muslim goes after a married woman, breaks down her defences, lures her into bed?Zainab: It wasn’t like that.Yusef to Zainab: You were my wife and you were going with another man. How do you think that made me feel?Masood to Yusef: You didn’t love Zainab but you still couldn’t stand losing her. It’s eaten you up like a worm gnawing away inside.Yusef: You could have saved me, Zainab, if you hadn’t left me, if you’d stayed with me.Zainab: One day in the kitchen, there was a different smell — not spices, something stronger. Kerosene. And heat on my skin, biting.Yusef: I loved you. I was angry, scared. My wife had betrayed me, my family had turned their back on me. I had nothing left.Zainab: So you burned me?Yusef: I was just a boy, Zainab. I wanted to hurt you.Masood to Yusef: While Zainab was alone in your house, cooking, someone poured oil into that room, set it on fire and locked the door.Yusef: It was me. I poured the oil, I lit the flame and I stood there and watched her burn.Tariq to Yusef: I watched you light the match that set your wife on fire. One match, that’s all it took.Yusef: A split second of childish anger, idiocy, and I’ve lived with it all my life.Afia, Yusef’s daughter: You tried to kill her and have lied about it ever since.Afia on Yusef: He tried to kill you.Zainab: Because I betrayed him, because I was unfaithful. That fire, it ruined our lives.Masood: It’s weird. If it hadn’t been for the fire, Zainab and I would never have got together.Yusef: What do you mean?Masood: I didn’t see any future in us. So I took the coward’s way out. I was leaving for the UK. I didn’t even tell Zainab I was going. When I got to the airport, I couldn’t leave, not without at least trying to explain. That’s when I found your house on fire and Zainab screaming.Zainab: I ran to the kitchen door, but it was locked. And then I started screaming, shouting for someone, anyone, “Come quickly, the kitchen’s on fire!” I started pushing and pushing, but I couldn’t open the door so I ran to the window and that’s when I saw her [her own reflection], her face staring back at me through the flames. She was burned.Shabman: Mum, that woman you told me about in the fire in Pakistan — it was you, wasn’t it?Zainab: The fire was started on purpose. I’m sure of it.Shabnam: By who?Zainab: Someone in the family.Zainab on the fire: I remember his brother being there, I remember his father, but I don’t remember Yusef being there.Zainab: How you did get your scars?Yusef: I went back for you.Yusef: When I found out what was happening, I rushed into the fire.Tariq on Yusef: He panicked.Denise on Yusef: He nearly died trying to save her.Tariq on Yusef: He went back, but Masood was there.Yusef to Zainab: I wanted to save you, I wanted to save my wife, but Masood got there first.Yusuf: Zainab was my wife — my wife, not yours. If you’d left her alone, none of this would have happened.Masood: If I’d have left her alone, she’d be dead.Yusef: No, I would have saved her.Masood: I walked into a fire for you, Zee.Masood to Zainab: I rushed into a fire to save you because I loved you.Zainab taking about herself: They took her to the hospital. Afterwards, no-one spoke about it.Shabnam: So they punished her and what did it achieve? Did she love the boy any less?Zainab on “The Book of Spices”: The book was destroyed [in the] fire, gone. Since then I haven’t been able to cook a single recipe because I was afraid.Yusef: A terrible thing happened and we all carry the scars to prove it.Tamwar Masood: Yusef hasn’t even spoken to his family since [the fire] happened.Zainab, speaking about Yusef in 2011: All these years, I’ve thought that it was him [who started the fire] and it was because of that, because of the fire, that — leaving him for Masood, you know — that made it OK, the fire made it OK. Masood: Zainab left you.Yusef: She didn’t leave me. You took her.Masood: The only thing she was ever forced to do was marry you.Yusef: My first wife disgraced me. I used to hate my first wife. I hated her for what she did, for humiliating me and my family. I see now that she was weak, easily swayed. That’s just the kind of woman she is, but I had to move on with my life, to be free of her.Masood on Zainab: She chose me.Masood to Zainab: You did choose me once and for a long time it was perfect.Masood to his son Syed: I bit my fingernails to the quick the day my parents met your mother. I suppose it mattered to me what they thought.Minty Peterson: Do you know what I miss? Them poker games.Phil Mitchell: Yeah. Marathons, weren't they?Garry Hobbs: I've been playing poker since I was eleven.Cora Cross: Last time I played poker, I had a bubble perm and shoulder-pads was in.Den Watts: Angie had to drag me out of [a poker game] that went on for three days. She wasn't pleased. Worried she'd have to do a bit of work around the Vic instead of drinking all the profits.Derek Branning: An old poker buddy of mine used to say, “You play with the devil’s fire, eventually you’ll get burned.”Ronnie Mitchell: I grew up with a player. I was brought up by the best conman in the business, my father.Michael Moon on Ronnie: She saw what her old man was like right from the start. She knew. She was always the brighter of the two [sisters].Eddie Moon to Michael: You’ve always had a good brain on you.Michael on Eddie: He didn’t teach me anything.Michael on Eddie: He’s good at conning people. He’s had a lifetime to practice it.Peggy on Ronnie: Thanks to Archie, that girl’s had a lifetime full of lies.Ronnie on Archie: He always lied to everybody and he manipulated everyone.Archie Mitchell to Ronnie: You think I’ve forgotten what it was like when you were little? My sweet little blonde haired angel chasing me round the garden, bright as a button. Your smile was like having the sun shine right at you. The pair of you, my little girls.Carol Jackson on Bianca: My daughter [was] a sweet little five year old who's worried she's got freckles and funny colour hair.Julie Perkins: I tried being sweet once, never again.Janine Butcher, speaking about Julie in 2011: Her hair might not look like it’s seen a brush since the early eighties but ...Carol, checking Bianca’s daughter’s hair for nits in 2010: Your mummy used to like me doing this to her. It was the only time that she kept quiet.Tiffany Butcher: Was she really noisy?Carol: We used to call her Super Gob!Bianca: Five years old, I was working. My mum was at home doing piecework, putting plastic toys together, and I used to hand her the bits.Aleks Shirovs on Ronnie: Has she always been … you know?Roxy Mitchell: What, a few sandwiches short of a picnic? Yes.Roxy Mitchell to Ronnie: I've always thought you looked quite thick.Ronnie: I’ve been looking after my sister all her life.Denise to her sister Kim: My whole life, I’ve been running round after you, doing your jobs, picking up your pieces.Ronnie on Roxy: I have been forgiving her my whole life.Roxy to Ronnie (sarcastically): You always did have a very forgiving nature, didn’t you?Ronnie on Roxy: When she was a little girl, my dad would always make me hold onto her pocket money because she would either lose it or she’d spend it the moment he gave it to her. Don’t think that didn’t make her resentful. He was subtle in his game playing.Glenda to Ronnie: You’ve always been such a good sister to [Roxy], picked up the slack, kept her in line.Roxy to Ronnie: All [Glenda] ever does is try and play us off against each other. It’s the same thing she’s done ever since we were kids.Ronnie to Archie: I was there for [Roxy] a lot more than you ever were.Roxy on “At the Zoo”: Dad used to read this to me like every night.Ronnie: I used to read it to you every night.Ronnie to Roxy: You’re my baby sister. We’ve always done everything together. We’ve always pulled through.Roxy on herself and Ronnie: We’ve always been there for each other, always.Roxy: All these years, Ronnie’s looked after me. She’s given me advice, held my hand, told me what to do, what not to do. Less like a sister ... All these years, I thought it was because she had my best interests at heart.Michael Moon to Roxy: Your whole life, [Ronnie]’s used you.Ronnie to Roxy: The truth is, it’s been you looking after me all these years.Roxy on Ronnie: I am all she’s ever had.Roxy: I lost track years back the amount of times me and my sister have fallen out.Roxy, speaking to Ronnie in 2011: I am not your little pet anymore, OK? I am not that little sister that you can just boss around and shove in the paddling pool because you didn’t get your way.Kim Fox to Denise: When I was a kid, you thought you was the boss of me.Denise: Thing about Kim is she’s selfish. If I’m not dragging her out of skips, then she’s nicking me Tiny Tears.Roxy on Cowgirl Barbie: I used to love this doll.Glenda: I know. I still remember when I tried to upgrade you to a Sindy. You weren’t happy.Roxy: That’s because, Mum, I was Barbie and Ronnie was Sindy.Glenda: Never stopped you fighting over Ken.Roxy: Yeah, we really grew out of that, didn’t we?!Glenda: I always got that sort of thing wrong. Your father knew your tastes so much better than I did. I used to try and second guess but he just did it by instinct. Always envied him that. I know you were always a daddy’s girl, but that doesn’t mean I loved you any less.Glenda to Roxy: All my life, I’ve not done the right thing by you girls.Archie on Roxy: Ever since she was a little girl, something new every five minutes. You [Ronnie] on the other hand, tenacious. Always had to master everything. Well, nearly everything.Glenda to Ronnie: You always did a lot of [thinking] even as a little girl. Always so buttoned up.Archie speaking about Ronnie in 2009: Some things I carry around with me all the time — souvenirs of things we did together — train tickets, funfair rides, the circus. She’s even drawn on some of them.Heather Trott: Mum said she encouraged me to run away with the circus, but they wouldn’t take me.Ricky Butcher: Me mum had a midlife crisis, did a lot of sulking and wearing mini-skirts.Mo Butcher: The car business could have been great if you'd got a few decent motors instead of filling the forecourt with every clapped-out old banger you could lay your hands on.Frank Butcher: I made a decent profit when I sold up.Pete Beale, speaking in 1985: "Didn't we do you once for a bald tyre?" [the policeman] said. "That was three years ago," I said.Pete, speaking in 1992: I can remember a place down Victoria Road ten years ago, got blown up [via a gas explosion]. Very, very messy.Pauline Fowler on Mark: He had [The Complete Works of Shakespeare] when he was at school — "Mark Fowler 4A"</blockquote>

Verification: What month follows July?