EE: The Poles Deserve Better

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The Poles deserve better than their own EastEnders
By Andrew Pierce
24/10/2008

As if four episodes a week of the ghastly EastEnders were not enough. Now a Polish version is being made in Warsaw, which will follow the exploits of emigrants who have made London their home.

I suspect Londynczycy (Londoners) is actually a dastardly idea by the new immigration minister, Phil Woolas, who last week wanted limits on the numbers coming in to Britain (we have no idea what Woolas thinks this week as he has been pulled off the BBC's Question Time, just in case he speaks his mind).

Londynczycy will accelerate the exodus of Poles from Britain, and deter thousands more from leaving their home if it depicts anything like the depressing life in Albert Square. I gather the latest thrilling storyline involves a paedophile. The producers always say they are examining gritty real-life issues. But I wonder. The lurid plots can surely be nothing to do with generating bigger audiences, can they?

I gave up on EastEnders when a Christmas special involved some unfortunate character hurling himself from the top of a multi-storey car park. Such festive cheer. Last new year, there was a fatal car crash. I should really love it. My family is as East End as they come: my father was brought up on the Isle of Dogs; my mum lived in Dagenham, on the same council estate where Sir Alf Ramsey grew up, which is the Pierce family's claim to fame (apart from the time we looked after Gilbert O'Sullivan's sister's goldfish); my sister was born within the sound of Bow bells.

They moved out after the Coronation, but, as I grew up, the lure of The Smoke became too strong to resist. I settled in E15 - just around the corner from the real Albert Square (not the fictional one in E23) and the daily grind we saw on the television in EastEnders was a world away from life outside our door. Admittedly, I was mugged twice, burgled once, and some joker removed the windscreen from what the vernacular might term my "flashy motor" (a Ford Fiesta). But, then, many of my friends in different parts of the country have experienced much the same.

The closest I got to characters such as the Mitchell "bruvvas", the baddies of the square, was when I met the actors who played them. There were no fights in my local pub, I read about murders in other parts of the capital, and the best drugs story I heard would have been too good for EastEnders: a neighbour was arrested for smuggling drugs from Thailand in his false leg.

I loved the East End and stayed there for 15 years, meeting some great characters in the process. I would have been out in a week if the denizens had been anything like the dysfunctional shower in Albert Square. I gather there are now plans to show EastEnders in Palestine - surely they have suffered enough already.