Pauline Fowler is a fictional character from the BBC One soap opera EastEnders. She was played by actress Wendy Richard between the first episode on 19 February 1985 and 25 December 2006. Pauline was created by scriptwriter Tony Holland and producer Julia Smith as one of EastEnders' original characters. She made her debut in the soap's first episode on 19 February 1985, and remained for twenty-one years and ten months, making her the second-longest-running original character, surpassed only by her nephew, Ian Beale (Adam Woodyatt).
Pauline is a member of the Beale family. Her storylines focus on drudgery, money worries and family troubles. The matriarchal stalwart of the fictional London community of Albert Square, she is at first portrayed as a loving, doting, very family-oriented mother. In later years, however, she becomes a more stoic, opinionated battle-axe who alienates her relatives through overbearing interference. Pauline is married to the downtrodden Arthur Fowler (Bill Treacher); she finds out he has had a one-night stand with Christine Hewitt (Elizabeth Power), which leads to Pauline hitting him with a frying pan. Their marriage remains rocky until his death in 1996. She is used for comedic purposes in scenes with her launderette colleague, Dot Cotton (June Brown), and scriptwriters included many feuds in her narrative, most notably with her daughter-in-law, Sonia Fowler (Natalie Cassidy), and Den Watts (Leslie Grantham), a family friend who got her daughter, Michelle Fowler (Susan Tully), pregnant at 16. A famous episode in 1986, which includes Pauline discovering that Den is the father of Michelle's baby, drew over 30 million viewers, and was listed at number 36 in The Times' 1998 list of "Top 100 cult moments in Film". Richard announced Pauline's retirement from the serial in July 2006, and the character was killed off in a "whodunnit?" murder storyline, with Richard making her final appearance on 25 December 2006.Pauline was a staple in the UK press during her time in EastEnders, representative of the symbiosis between Britain's soaps and tabloid newspapers. Widely read tabloids, such as The Sun and Daily Mirror, would routinely publish articles about forthcoming developments in Pauline's storylines. Critical opinion on the character differs. She has been described as a "legend" and a television icon, but was also voted the 35th "most annoying person of 2006" (being the only fictional character to appear on the list). The character is well-known even outside of the show's viewer-base, and away from the on-screen serial, Pauline has been the subject of television documentaries, behind-the-scenes books, tie-in novels, and comedy sketch shows.
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