for the old, wild dangerous Pat who wore the white mac and looked as if she chewed up broken bottles for breakfast, but the Pat we had [at that time] had become too safe and comfortable. She’d had her affair story with Frank – and since he was and is the love of her life, if she didn’t leave [Roy] for Frank she wasn’t going to do it for anyone else. To galvanise Pat we had to lose Roy. But I wish now we’d found some other way. Roy had a stability about him that we needed, and losing both him and Mark Fowler (Todd Carty) within a year left us a kind of moral hole in the centre of the show. Those older ‘good’ characters have a role that extends far beyond the immediate gratification of story – as Lou Beale did in the past." References External links EastEnders characters Television characters introduced in 1994 Fictional businesspeople Fictional salespeople Male characters in television Fictional attempted suicides