Den Watts
Den Watts is a fictional character from the BBC soap opera EastEnders, played by actor Leslie Grantham. He became well known for his tabloid nickname, "Dirty Den". Den was the original landlord of The Queen Victoria public house from Albert Square who first appeared when the show debuted on 19 February 1985. From then onwards, the character had a turbulent marriage with his alcoholic first wife Angie.
In 1986, Den discovers that Angie lied to him about having six months to live and got revenge by giving her divorce papers on Christmas Day 1986, which was watched by over 30 million viewers. Den continued his close relationship with their adopted daughter Sharon. Den soon became involved in storylines that mostly contributed to the character's magnanimous and "bad boy" persona, such as Den impregnating 16-year-old Michelle Fowler – which resulted in a long-standing feud with Michelle's mother Pauline Fowler ; teaming up with Pete Beale to force their enemy Nick Cotton out of Walford for causing trouble around the square; romancing with his mistress Jan Hammond ; and getting revenge on business rival James Willmott-Brown for raping Pete's wife Kathy. Grantham quit the series in 1988, and in February 1989, Den was apparently killed off after getting shot due to his involvement with The Firm.
Despite turning down several offers to return, Grantham reprised the role 14 years later in a highly publicised week in September 2003, where Sharon discovered that Den had survived his shooting and had fled to Spain afterwards. The development of Den's return to the show was contributed with the introductions of his and Michelle's daughter Vicki and his biological son Dennis Rickman, and later Den's second wife Chrissie. His second stint on the programme saw Den repeatedly clash with Dennis over his romantic feelings for Sharon, and he later has sex with Dennis' girlfriend Zoe Slater and gets her to lie that she is pregnant. Additionally, Den establishes a rivalry with Sharon's ex-boyfriend Phil Mitchell that ends with him framing the latter for armed robbery; forms a friendship with Dot Cotton ; has sex with Phil's ex-wife Kate Morton and his sister Sam as revenge; and cons Sam into relinquishing her ownership of The Queen Vic back to him. Grantham left in 2004, and Den was ultimately killed off for good on 18 February 2005, during the show's 20th anniversary episode, when he was fatally bludgeoned to death by Chrissie, which was watched by 14.34 million viewers.
Character creation
Background
Den Watts was one of the original 23 characters devised by the creators of EastEnders, Tony Holland and Julia Smith. The character of Den was originally going to be called Jack and he, his wife and adopted teenage daughter were to be the occupants of the soap's local pub, now famously known as The Queen Vic. Holland, who had worked as a barman in his youth, called upon his own personal experiences to invent the Watts family and the pub they lived in. Holland and Smith had always been critical of the way pubs had been portrayed on television feeling they lacked vitality and life, so they were determined that their pub and occupants were going to be more realistic. The Watts family were seen by Holland as integral to the show's success, partly because he had already guessed that the pub was going to be a monstrous battleground where emotions would run high on a regular basis, and also because the occupants would be providing the majority of the drama.Den's original character outline as written by Smith and Holland appeared in an abridged form in their book, EastEnders: The Inside Story. In this passage, Den will be referred to as Jack, his wife as Pearl, his daughter as Tracey and his dog as Prince.
Casting controversy
EastEndersFollowing a successful reading with the actress Jean Fennell, he was offered the part. However, shortly afterwards Grantham contacted Smith and asked to speak to her urgently. He revealed that he had been found guilty of killing a German taxi driver while on army service in 1966 and spent ten years in prison. Although there were fears that if this story got out the resultant publicity would do enormous damage to the programme and the BBC, Smith decided not to withdraw Grantham from the role. In her opinion, he had paid the full penalty that society requires for a mistake committed in his past and it was a "Christian duty to forgive".
The story found its way into the British press much faster than expected. Three days after the transmission of episode one, EastEnders made the front page of a national newspaper for the first time with the headline "EASTENDERS STAR IS A KILLER." The security gates at the BBC Elstree Centre were swamped with journalists and photographers, and so began a "double-edged" relationship between EastEnders and the popular press. The devisers of the programme were quick to realise that whilst a newspaper's publicity may sometimes boost a soap's position in the ratings, it could equally help to tarnish it. In conjunction, soaps could help to sell newspapers, and from then on stories about EastEnders and the cast began to fill their pages. Grantham was hounded by the press and the BBC was forced to put out a statement supporting him and their decision to employ a convicted murderer. To keep the press at bay, Grantham was smuggled out of the studios by the rear entrance and decoy cars were used to lure the press away from his home, all of which put an increasing strain on him. Eventually the furore quietened down, but it never went away entirely and nearly every article written about Grantham during his first stint in the show referenced his past. The press began to blur the characters in the show with the actors and it was at this point that Smith, in an attempt to dispel confusion about reality and fiction, introduced the rule that no actor was ever to appear in public "in character".
Character development and impact
Despite the controversy surrounding Grantham, the Wattses, with Anita Dobson as the newly appointed Angie, were the surprise hit characters of the show. Angie and Den were a livewire couple whose on/off relationship made the Queen Vic pub "exciting and unpredictable" and the viewers tuned in their millions to watch the destruction of their relationship on-screen. Den's clashes with Angie brought EastEnders to a peak of popularity and removed rival soap Coronation Street from the top of the ratings chart."Dirty Den"
In 1985, Den was the first person to speak on the first episode of EastEnders: "Stinks in here dunnit?" just before he found out that Reg Cox had been murdered. Early on in the series, the character of Den became central to the programme and was the focus of a controversial storyline involving the teenage pregnancy of Michelle Fowler. Press interest in the show escalated as journalists continuously tried to predict who had fathered Michelle's baby. In true whodunit fashion, the audience had been kept in the dark as to the real identity of the father and were given teasers implicating several residents on the Square. The audience finally discovered the culprit in Episode 66 of the programme, broadcast on 3 October 1985. The episode was written by series co-creator/script editor Tony Holland and directed by co-creator/producer Julia Smith, and was considered to be a landmark episode in the show's history. Four possible suspects were seen leaving the Square in the early half of the episode: Tony Carpenter, Ali Osman, Andy O'Brien and Den Watts. As Michelle waited by their rendezvous point, a car pulled up and finally the fluffy white legs of Roly the poodle bounded out of the car, and gave it all away: Den Watts was the man meeting Michelle and it was he who had fathered her baby. It was when Den was revealed as the father that his famous nickname "Dirty Den" was created by the British press. The rest of the episode consisted of just one long scene, where Den and Michelle discussed whether or not to keep the baby. Up to that time it was the longest scene ever done in a soap opera, lasting fifteen minutes. For a series that in its first eight months of existence had established a reputation for being fast-moving and rapidly cut, this was a bold experiment. It relied on just the one story and two actors to hold the audience for over half an episode. Tony Holland's handling of the awkward scene between a teenage girl and the father of her best friend is deemed as one of the highlights of EastEnders first year. The finishing touch was the use of an alternative end title music, a variation of the normal one which replaced the dramatic drum beats with a longer, gentler piano solo introduction.After this storyline the programme started to appear in newspaper cartoons as it moved more and more into the public mainstream. One such cartoon showed the British Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, telling her cabinet that the best way to alert the country to the dangers of AIDS was to give the disease to Den.