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Message: <blockquote data-quote="James from London" data-source="post: 121609" data-attributes="member: 22">2002Jack Branning, looking at a pop-up book about farmyard animals: My [daughter] Penny had one of these.Jack: Penny went through a phase of wanting to be a baker when she was about seven. Every Saturday we’d be baking cakes, for about six months.Max Branning: I spent years making cakes for the girls.Jack on Penny: I did a horrible job of bringing her up.Tamwar Masood: I’ve been cooking for years.Dexter Hartman on cooking: My mum taught me.Lauren Branning: Nan’s still got that same scary look that she had on my eighth birthday when she threw up all over my Happy Meal.Stacey Slater: I always did prefer the taste of somebody else’s chips to mine.Jean on Stacey’s eating habits: Breakfast, dinner and tea — always chips.Stacey: I’ve never liked chips.Stacey: I hate chips. You couldn't get a dinner round ours without chips in it when I was a kid. It didn't matter what you was having. I got to thirteen and I said to my mum, "You know, there is other things you can do with a potato. She said, "I pay the rent, you do what I say and you get what you're given." So I broke her peeler deliberately. I went into the kitchen the next morning, she's standing there with a cereal bowl full of chips and a pint of milk. And I'm going, "I don't do breakfast, Mum." And she said, "Oven chips. You think you're so clever, my girl, but there's always oven chips."     Ruby Allen: We used to have an orange for breakfast, you know — cut in half like a grapefruit, in a bowl with a spoon, and then we had cereal and toast and a glass of milk, and Mum used to set the table out the night before to save time so we could spend ten minutes together in the morning. Dad just used to read the paper, but Mum said that was how families were supposed to spend the morning — you know, us four, together, for ten minutes.Stacey: Gareth Gates?!Ruby: I was only thirteen at the time.Stacey: I used to fancy Will Young. I was devastated when I found out he batted for the other side.Anthony Moon on Tyler: His closet door’s always been a bit ajar.Amira Shah: A girl did try and kiss me when I was at school. It was a dare.Linda Carter, speaking in 2014: I’ve been going to Mario [her hairdresser] for twelve years.Nancy on Linda: She used to have a right laugh with her hairdresser. She was always nosing in on his sex life. Alice Branning on “Snow White and Rose Red”: I used to love this [story]. It’s about two princesses called Snow White and Rose Red and I always wanted to be Rose Red because she had the dark hair, and there’s this bear that’s actually a cursed prince and evil dwarves. It was my favourite.Joey Branning: It’s the one I used to read you when Mum was at work, else you wouldn’t sleep.Chelsea Fox on herself and Libby: I still picture us with our little PJs on with Mum reading us a bedtime story — because she used to always read to us right up until Squiggle left primary school. I remember [Libby] wasn't very happy because a lot of the other kids thought she was really weird because she was always reading a book or off in her head some place and some days, in fact most days, I would meet you [Libby] at the school gates and you'd be crying your eyes out over something someone had said to you. So I'd go and sort them out, wouldn't I? Anyway, Mum had this one book. It was French but somehow it had the translations in it. It was about a little rabbit ...Libby: ... who felt like a misfit ...Chelsea: ... because he didn't fit in with all the other animals ...Libby: ... but his mum said he had to hold himself up high and be proud of himself ...Chelsea: ... because she loved him ...Chelsea and Libby in unison: ... just the way he was.Denise on Chelsea and Libby: Two scraggly little things.Heather Trott, speaking in 2007: I'm a professional checkout operative with five years experience.Heather: Most bosses I've had seem to hate me.Tanya Branning: Why'd you join the army?Sean Slater: See the world. Never good at staying in any one place too long.Sean: They always said, "The army'll straighten him out."Sean: I did a course [in electrics] in the army. I'm 16th edition qualified, me.Sean: I liked the army. It had rules and I like rules.Ruby: You were in the army?Al, a soldier in Sean's unit: Yeah.Sean: You and me were such good mates, Al — all our years together, all through basic training, passing out. You and me — over there together.Kevin Wicks: I imagine you travelled a lot in the army.Sean: I did, actually. I saw a fair bit of the world, but not the best bits. There's a reason why Iraq ain't a popular holiday destination.Stacey: You been in the thing — in Iraq?Sean: Yeah, I've been in the thing.Sean: The day I got my posting, it was the best day of my life. The Gulf, Kosovo — I was too young. This was my war.Sean: I didn't just want a war, Carly, I wanted a bloodbath.Sean on Iraq: I liked it there. It was the first place I felt at home in years.Bradley Branning on Iraq: How was it?Sean: Hot.Bradley on Sean: Iraq? What's he doing over there?Stacey: Laying in a desert working on his tan. What do you think?Tanya: Bit of a hero?Sean: I did my share.Sean: I screwed up when I was in the army.Sean: Two tours in Basra and nutters trying to blow you up at every opportunity.Sean: Been in the forces, have you, on a tour, waking up every day wondering, "Is this the day"?Sean: Pouring warm beer into pint glasses ain't work. Walking down the street, back against the wall, knowing there's a sniper in that building, hiding, waiting to put one right between your eyes — that's work.Sean: Was John Keats ever stuck on a checkpoint with mortars being lobbed over at him? Did John Keats ever have to scrape up the remains of a mate who'd been caught by an IED?Sean: I had this one mate, Lee, a Scouser. He was the only Scouser on the whole planet without a sense of humour. Hated everything. He hated the sun, he hated the flies, he even hated the army. Never ever stopped moaning. We used to go on patrol together, watch each other's backs. Then one day, one day, I got sick — food, water, I don't know. So I stayed behind. Lee's convoy got hit — IED. Lost both his legs above the knee. Pensioned off at twenty-three.Sean to Roxy: Did you ever think you'd have kids? Because I didn't. I've always tried to steer clear of family. No-one messes you up like they do. When I was in Iraq, you could always tell if someone had kids. They were different somehow — more careful, more cautious. This one night, we were on an ambush. We were just sitting waiting around. I got talking to this corporal. I can't even remember his name. He told me that he had kids. He said to me that the first time he held his newborn baby in his arms, when he looked down at his face, he said that he'd never been more scared in his life. We're talking about someone who'd spent years on the front line, and he was scared. I mean, he was really scared. He didn't want to die. He couldn't bear the thought of leaving this kid behind. You know what? It really got to me because it's never really bothered me much, dying.Stacey to Sean: You go half way round the world and risk getting blown to bits in some war that's got absolutely nothing to do with you, but you can't stay at home and fight for your own family — bleeding soldier boy. You never thought about me for one moment.Sean on Iraq: I liked it. The world made sense.Tanya: What, with people trying to kill you?Sean: That's the job, isn't it? You have a pop at them, they have a pop at you.Tanya: Yeah, but you never shot anyone, did you?Sean: Yeah.Tanya: Yeah, but you didn't kill them?Sean: You get hit in the head with an SA80, it's going to sting.Tanya: You killed someone? What did that feel like?Sean: It was straightforward. I was just doing my job, wasn't I? Didn't really feel like nothing.Tanya: No hate, no anger?Sean: No nothing — but that's good because if you're going to be killing people, you've got to be dead too, inside. That's what I was for years — dead.Kate Morton, speaking in 2003: A friend of mine died last year, heart attack. Saturday night, we were all down the pub having a laugh. The next morning, he got up to play football, Sunday league — bang — dropped down dead — no-one near him, just like that. He was only thirty-one. And what was the last thing I said to him? "With all that extra weight you're carrying around, Jeff, you're going to end up killing yourself." It was meant as a joke, you know, because he had a bit of a beer gut. Turns out he had a bit of a heart defect as well. This was one of my best mates, someone I went to primary school with, and all I ever did was wind him up and give him a hard time. I don't think I ever said anything nice to him. I certainly never told him how much I liked him and I never ever realised how much I'd miss him.Joey on Alice: I ain’t ever told her that I love her.Kevin: We always do something on Jimbo's birthday. It's tradition.Spencer Moon, speaking to Alfie and Nana in 2003: It was horrible not being together last year [for the anniversary of his parents' deaths].Carly Wicks: Every year, come the anniversary [of her brother's death], they [Kevin and Dean] go a bit funny.Carly: Every year it's the same. It's Jimbo's anniversary so Deano ruins breakfast.Dean: It's a tradition.Carly: It's only a tradition because you say so.Kevin on the anniversary: We get through [the] day as best we can and we look after each other.Dean on the anniversary: It's supposed to be our special day, something that we share together.Carly: It's not our day that we share. Do you know what I do? I watch you and Dad get so wasted that you can't even stand.Carly to Kevin: You lock yourself in some pub and pick fight with complete strangers and [Dean] causes chaos.Dean, mid-anecdote: … I mean, seriously! I said, “put your money where your mouth is,” stripped off, gave the chap a second head start …Lauren: You ran across town completely naked?Dean: Virtually, yeah!Carly to Dean: You pull your stunts.Dean: They ain't stunts.Carly: What do you call riding your bike off of Woolwich Pier then?Dean: You should have seen the people's faces!Dean: I ended up overnight in the cells. I only got a caution though.Carly: And who had to come and pick you up from the police station, eh Dean? Was it you, Dad? No, because you [Kevin] were down some pub picking glass out your head because you said to some brickie's wife that she looked like Kevin Keegan.Kevin: Well, she had the hair.Dean to Carly: I never asked you to pick me up.Carly to Dean: You go and do stupid dangerous stuff that makes me think you're going to go and kill yourself. That's what you do, and I just clean up after you. We don't talk to each other. We might as well be on our own because we are really. We don't share that day.Kevin: I dread that date coming past, the anniversary. The minute it's passed, I know it's going to come round again. You're just waiting. It don't get any better, any easier.Masood on Zainab's attempts to impress her friend Bushra: Like the time you told her [about] Syed's ten As at GCSE.Dennis Rickman: I've been educated at some of the finest establishments in the country.Sharon Watts: Wormwood Scrubs?Vicki Fowler: So real men do iron?Dennis: Yeah, prison laundry's full of them and you didn't take the mick neither.Christian Clarke: You’ve never used an iron?Amira: That’s what dry cleaners are for, isn’t it?Tyler Moon: You know how to cook, do you?Derek Branning: Well, if it’s the difference between sitting in a cell for a ten stretch or learning how to make a lasagne, it ain’t long before you’re pinnied up and standing in front of a cooker. I met this guy, a fellow con. Quite a funny story actually. I’d been in about a year, right, so I get a call up to the warden’s office. I walk in. He’s looking at me. He says, “I’m sorry, Branning. It’s a Dear John.”Tyler: Dear John? What’s that?Derek: It’s a letter you get from your missus when she’s informing you it’s all over.Tyler: Ouch.Derek: No greater ouch, mate. There’s nothing you can do about it on the inside. You see, the screws, they all read your mail so he knew what to expect. He’s looking at me. He goes, “Branning, you need the doctor.” Do you know what he gave me? Three sleeping pills. Three sleeping pills for a broken heart.Tyler: Did she give a reason?Derek: The pain of separation she put it down to. She should have tried it from my side. Anyway, a couple of days later, a geezer comes up to me. Heard I’d had a Dear John. He’d had one the week before.Tyler: This is your chef mate, yeah?Derek: Yeah. We used to sit in my cell planning our escape, how we was going to win our women back in a hail of bullets. And then we realised it was easier to have nothing on the outside. And that’s when he taught me how to cook.Shirley Carter: I got this mate that got a two year stretch and the only way to survive in the nick is to be prepared for anything. You keep your mouth shut. You don't grass, you don't boast. You show respect and you don't cry or show any fear or weakness at all. So then you don't become a target.Shirley: I had this mate once. She got nicked for shoplifting. Did three months inside. One night they gave her a new cellmate. Proper bag-head she was. She was rattling when she landed, but they bunged her in with my mate because they thought she might top herself on the ones. That night she was banging on the door, begging for methadone, anything that would take the pain away, but they were on a twenty-three hour lock up. The next day she was all curled up on the ground, banging her arms and legs on the floor because the pain, it hurt so much. A week it took. In that week — it weren't pretty, but she was clean by the end of it.Spencer Moon to Alfie: You know what Nan's cooking's like. That's the only thing in the nick that was an improvement.Alfie: I'd just done a [prison] stretch [before arriving in Walford].Nana Moon: Did they feed you properly in that horrible place? They didn't hurt you, did they?Alfie: No, no, no, no.Spencer: When Alfie got out [of prison], he'd lost over a stone.Kat Slater: What did you have [to eat] when you came out [of prison]?Alfie: Oh, I had a bit of fruit and a fry up, but I had this dream of a real big, home-cooked roast dinner. That was my absolute fantasy, that was.Zainab Masood on her son Syed: Aloo gosht, that was always his favourite, wasn't it?Masood Ahmed to Tamwar: Your mum's pakora, always been one of my favourites — usually wheeled out as comfort food like when I crashed the car or when she has some bad news.Ruby: My mum used to make [spaghetti bolognese].Johnny on Ruby: Her mum cooked the Sunday dinner.Tina Stewart: You never helped Stephanie in the kitchen?Johnny: Sometimes. It's just that Steph and the girls were more the washing up mob.Tina: And you sat around on your butt?Johnny: Just sort of fell into a pattern. Part of being a family, I guess.Heather: Mummy used to do all [the washing].Tanya: In all the years we were together I can count on the fingers of one hand the amount of times Max [loaded the dishwasher].Tanya: I'm no women's libber. I've never had the urge to put up a shelf in me life.Tanya on her daughters: Every minute of their little lives, I've watched them grow. I used to be full of hope.Wayne Ladlow: I got bitten [by a dog] when I was a kid.Johnny Carter to Nancy: You, forcing me to race you round Whippendell Wood.Ava Hartman: I tried to find you once. I was in my late thirties. I felt a bit lost.Cora Cross: What happened?Ava: Got scared.Cora: Worried I’d disappoint you?Ava: You rejected me once. Who’s to say you wouldn’t do it again?Cora: So you never tried?Ava: I decided the past was best left there.AJ Ahmed, speaking about his wife Aliyah in 2012: She’s been wanting to have kids for about ten years now. I’ve always been able to put her off, make her see that we don’t need kids to be happy.Stacey to Sean: Every bleeding year I kept waiting for a [birthday] card from you and I kept thinking, "Maybe this year he'll remember." How stupid could I be?Alfie on his life in Walford: This all started with me being chucked off the tube.Jimmie Broome: Would you say your job contributed to the breakdown of your first marriage?Jack Branning: You’d have to ask my ex-wife.Jack: When I was in the force, I always worked at Christmas. Kept me busy. Not a good time to be away from your family.Sean: Christmas is usually the blackest day of the year for me. The amount of Christmases I've spent wasted in a bedsit or the barracks listening to soldiers crying.2003Rose Cotton: He was in my ward, mixed it were. He kept me company when you rushed off to see your precious Aunty Gwen. You went and left me all on my own. He worked on the floor [of a] carpet factory on the Wirral, sweeping up the cuttings. He wasn’t married anymore.Dot: That made a change.Rose: He wondered if I’d like to come down here [Southend] and retire with him. He had grandchildren here and I thought, “Southend, sounds nice.”Sean on life as a squaddie: I was a paranoid mess. Anytime anyone laughed behind my back, I thought the joke was about me. I smacked them in the mouth.Zoe Slater: Stacey ain't had a very stable background.Stacey to her mother Jean: When you were tranqued up to the eyeballs, it was me who kept this place going. Not you, me. It was me who made sure you ate, me who made sure you had a bath because you were lying in your pit for weeks.Abby, Stacey’s friend: I’ve been round her [Stacey’s] house, right, and she’s got her mum in the bath and changing her clothes for her.Stacey: We used to be best mates, Abby.Mrs Cowan, Paula Rickman's next door neighbour: We were neighbours, not friends. I only got involved when I saw the milk piling up.Paula Rickman died 30/03/2003Dennis Rickman to Jack Dalton: I spent eighteen months in prison for you — eighteen months hard labour. Eighteen months of bullies and little Hitlers.Dennis on himself and Tony Jamison: We served our time. We kept our mouths shut.Jack Dalton: You never could take any lying down, Dennis, could you? I always said you had steel ones and I was right. You did your time without blabbing.Heather: Skip, my American fella.Shirley: He was on Death Row.Heather: He never loved me though.Shirley: Because you sent him a picture of Jordan and said it was you.Shirley on sex: You know what they say — it’s justlike riding a bike.Heather: But I haven’t been in the saddle since May Bank Holiday, 2003.Stacey speaking about Jean in 2008: Do you know how many years she has been alone since my dad died and never even looked at another bloke?Rose Cotton, speaking in 2011: I often wonder about my Andrew. He hasn’t had a girlfriend for years, not that you’d care to remember. His last girlfriend was ever so sweet, but touched a bit by the ugly stick, poor thing.Andrew Cotton: I’ve never been like other blokes. I’ve never had much success with women. Never even know what to say to them.Dot to Rose: Andrew said that you had gentlemen friends from all over the world — France, Spain, Channel Islands.Dexter Hartman on Ava: Most of the time, it’s just been me and her. No one on the scene, really.Ava Hartman on romance: I gave up a long time ago.Heather on romance: It was all I ever wanted once.Big Mo: I had [standards] once.Jean: Yeah well, we all did — waiting in for the magic man. Years ago, I told myself, “I am not going to be alone.” Wanted a bit of comforting if I’m honest.Jean to Stacey: Since your dad, I’ve not ... well, not with my head in the right place or with someone that wasn’t just using me.Denise Fox speaking in 2006: My love life has been a pretty low priority these last couple of years.Owen Turner: Be honest with yourself, please. Has there ever been anyone else who made you feel like I do?Denise: Plenty.Danielle Jones: I’ve never had a proper boyfriend. No-one’s ever asked me out.Danielle on motorbikes: Gareth, my brother, had one of them.Andy Jones on a picture of Danielle with her school friends: They won the Year 9 relay. She was chuffed to little bits when they won. She was so proud of herself that day. I don’t think I ever saw her smile so much. She was so happy. Look at that smile.Ronnie Mitchell, looking at the picture: She’s wearing a locket.Dexter Hartman: No kid can get through that — growing up without a dad. Oh wait, I did.Ava to Sam: I never dissed you [to Dexter]. I only told him good things.Ava on Dexter: I brought him up. I was there. It was me who watched him score his first goal, standing on the sidelines with the other dads. It was me who stayed up all night in A&E the night that he broke his wrist.Johnny Carter to Linda and Mick: You two never even missed a sports day.Nancy on Linda: Do you not remember when she came to sports day even though everyone thought she had meningitis?Johnny: Yeah, but it wasn’t meningitis was it? It was an allergic reaction to her foundation.Nancy on Lee’s temper: You’ve been like this since we was kids. Do you remember the time I stuffed all my crayons in your Mister Frosty and broke it and you thought it was OK to do that to my arm [pointing to a scar]? Linda to Johnny: Fists and fighting, that’s always been the other two, but you, you’re the brains of the outfit. Linda to Johnny: It’s good to know I brought one of you up right.Mick: Of course, I had no part in bringing him up, did I?Linda: Yes, yes. We all know you’re the best parent in the world.Mick on Johnny: The boy don’t eat jam. He never has.Johnny: It’s not really my thing.Mick: He used to say the same about milk when he was a little boy.Linda on Johnny: He’s never failed an exam in his life. He’s never failed at anything. Even at primary school he was top of his class. He knew his times tables before anyone else and everybody’s always said it — “he’s going places.”Ruby: Scarlet got four As and four A stars [in her GCSEs].Bradley Branning: I went bowling for my sixteenth, me and a few mates.Mick to Lee and Johnny: I’ve been making these things [guys for bonfire night] for you for years.</blockquote>

Verification: Who played Sue Ellen in Dallas?