Pete Beale
Pete Beale is a fictional character from the BBC soap opera EastEnders, played by Peter Dean. He makes his first appearance in the programme's first episode, on 19 February 1985. The character was introduced by Tony Holland, one of the creators of EastEnders; he was based on a member of Holland's family. Pete is featured in the soap for eight years as the local fruit and veg trader of Albert Square; he is a member of the original focal clan in the serial, the Beales and Fowlers. Pete is portrayed as a macho and somewhat insensitive individual who struggles to cope with emotion. Pete was axed from the soap in 1993 and departed in May that year after over eight years on-screen. The character was killed off-screen later that year, following Peter Dean's public criticism of the BBC.
Creation and development
Background and casting
Pete Beale was one of the original twenty-three characters invented by the creators of EastEnders, Tony Holland and Julia Smith. Holland took the inspiration for some of the series' earliest characters from his own London family and background. Pete was based on one of his cousins, the twin brother to Pauline and son of Holland's aunt Lou; a family set-up that would eventually be recreated on-screen and would go on to be forever hailed as the first family of EastEnders, the Beales and Fowlers.Pete's original character outline as written by Smith and Holland appeared in an abridged form in their book, EastEnders: The Inside Story: "Pete runs a fruit and veg stall in the market....married very young to Pat - It turned out to be a total disaster. They were too young, rushing into a difficult life for all the wrong reasons, and truthfully, his wife was a vicious shrew... he divorced his wife and married Kathy Beale when he was 24... Ian was born a year later. It took Kathy and Pete about ten years to woo Lou round to the idea of their marriage, and she can still sometimes be a bit cutting about it.... She doesn't believe in divorce... He did have crazy dreams of making something of himself, he was going to be singer, a red-coat, run his own hotel... On special occasions it's always Pete who's the life and soul of the party.... His two sons by his first marriage are nineteen and twenty and he hardly sees them.... If it wasn't for Thatcher, he'd consider voting Tory.... Never works on the anniversary of his dad's death, and with Pauline, escorts his mum to the cemetery. He has a good relationship with Kathy, emotionally and sexually.
Peter Dean was an actor known to Smith and Holland for his role in the crime drama Law and Order. Dean was from the East End of London and his family owned a stall in the market, just as the character he auditioned for did. Holland and Smith have said that despite the fact that Dean gave a disappointing reading at his audition, his tremendous enthusiasm for the part and for the show made up for it. He was subsequently offered the part. Adam Woodyatt, the actor playing Pete's son Ian, suggested in 2010 that Dean, along with Wendy Richard, Susan Tully and Shirley Cheriton were "the big names" of the original cast, all formerly known to the public; therefore, media interest in them was greater initially.
Characterisation
Author Hilary Kingsley has described Pete as "rough and ready Rough with his tongue and his fists, and ready to jump into an argument whether he knows anything about it or not. Act first, think later, if at all, is Pete's attitude." She implied that he was unintelligent suggesting that he would not get into Mensa and that he seems "thick as a brick". It has been suggested by writer Dorothy Hobson that the character of Pete was a portrayal of a typical East End male, "macho and mouthy". Author Christine Geraghty has suggested that Pete was seemingly intolerant of difference, but that his position was always undermined "by his blustering espousal of an excessively masculine position. Pete's , like much else he does, are not followed through." Discussing the character's other qualities, author Kate Lock has suggested that Pete was "a simple, amiable sort of chap left others to get on with the complicated things in life." Lock added that complications were beyond Pete's grasp and that he had trouble articulating emotions. Meanwhile, author Rupert Smith has classified Pete as a "soft touch" character. He added that Pete started off as "a cheery chappy" but became "hard to like", using his failure to support his wife Kathy through her rape ordeal in 1988 as a reason why he lost public sympathy.David Buckingham, author of Public Secrets: EastEnders and its Audience, has discussed the writers use of Pete, specifically to show masculinity in an innovative way - as a problem. He suggested that with Pete, the programme questioned the traditional definition of masculinity: "Pete clearly regards himself as a 'real man' and as 'the boss' of his family He also feels he is an expert on women on the other hand, however, Pete's masculine self-image has been repeatedly undermined. The arrival of his ex-wife Pat Wicks , for example, provided a view of Pete which had not hitherto been heard in the serial: she told Pauline that Pete was 'boring, selfish and terrible in bed', and went on to torment him by revealing that he was not in fact the father of his son Simon - 'you're not man enough to make Simon'." Buckingham also suggests that Pete was also publicly humiliated on a number of occasions, with the most "remarkable example" being shown in 1987, after he was victim to a practical joke and attended an alleged cross-dressing party at The Queen Victoria public house as the only person in full drag. The episode ended with a close-up of Pete's "tear-stained, luridly made-up face". Buckingham suggested that Pete's definition of his own masculinity regularly came into question in the serial, and the connection between masculinity and violence - shown occasionally with Pete - "far from being celebrated, has been seen as a problem".
Pete's catchphrase was "Alright treacle?" pronounced "awight treacle", often used when addressing female characters. Peter Dean has discussed why the catchphrase came into existence: "I had this saying - treacle. There was this long scene with Den and his mistress and I had to ask her for a drink, but I completely forgot her name, so said 'Give us a drink, treacle'. And after the episode came out, the actress said her children kept calling her treacle! A couple of scriptwriters wanted to stop it - they didn't want any catchphrases. But one lovely writer put it in so I could say it was in the script! And it stuck. Poor people couldn't afford sugar so put treacle in their tea. And it just means someone sweet and nice. I always said it and my granddad said it. Even now people come up to me and ask if I'll say 'Awight treacle' down their mobile phone to someone."
A prop regularly used by Pete was a metallic pewter tankard; Pete had his own tankard kept at the soap's public house, which Pete allegedly drank beer from. However, Peter Dean, who was a Buddhist in real life, would only drink lemonade in pub scenes; and therefore the tankard had to be used to disguise the fact that he was not really supping beer.
Development
Pete Beale was initially scheduled to be a short-term character. It had been decided way in advance that the big New Year cliffhanger of 1986 would be the killing-off of a character and the chosen person had to have the greatest effect on the remaining characters. Pete Beale was the obvious choice as his death would leave Kathy a widow and Ian would have to take over as head of the house. Lou was his mother, Pauline his sister and Den Watts his best friend, and everyone knew him from the fruit and veg stall, so storylines were planned in which Pete would have a heart-attack; a shock tactic to revive interest in the show after the excitement of Christmas. At the last minute, Julia Smith got "cold feet" and decided that Pete was too useful a character to lose so early in the programme's history; like Pauline he was considered a linchpin character. A new shock storyline was needed and so it was decided to introduce Den's mistress Jan Hammond into the show instead.One of the most notable storylines featuring Pete revolved around the paternity of his alleged son, Simon Wicks. Pete was shell-shocked to discover that Simon, was not really his child, and that he was possibly the son of his brother Kenny. The storyline spanned several years, since the arrival of Pete's first wife Pat in 1986, until the long-awaited showdown between Pete, Pat and Kenny in February 1988. The episode written by Tony McHale contained shocking revelations that would affect several relationships on the Square for years to come. In the on-screen events, Simon was shown to bond with Kenny, despite Pat admitting that she did not know which of the Beale brothers had fathered Wicksy. A final plot twist mid-1988 saw Pat finally reveal what she thought was the truth, that Simon's real father was Brian Wicks, Pat's second husband and Wicksy's adoptive father. Despite this revelation on-screen, writer Colin Brake stated in an official EastEnders
The character of Pete lasted in the show for eight years, and was eventually written out in 1993 when the writers felt that the character had come to a natural end. There was initially talk of Pete getting back together with his ex-wife Kathy, but it was felt that it would have been a retrogressive step, and it was dismissed. The character was killed in an off-screen car crash in December 1993 and brought back to Walford to be buried. The press reported at the time that Pete was killed off because he spoke negatively about EastEnders in the press following his axing. There was also speculation that he had not got along with Gillian Taylforth, who played his ex-wife Kathy. Dean commented, "When they wrote me out of EastEnders, they said they had run out of storylines. I was a naughty boy and said if the wheel falls off the cart, get rid of the cart. But they got rid of me, not the scriptwriters What gets me is the way it was done. It's all politics and backstabbing."