EastEnders created the Beale and Fowler family, drawing on his own background. His mother, Ethel Holland, was one of four sisters raised in Walthamstow. Her eldest sister, Lou, had married a man named Albert Beale and had two children, named Peter and Pauline. These family members were the basis for Lou Beale, Pete Beale and Pauline Fowler. Holland also created Pauline's unemployed husband Arthur Fowler, their children Mark Fowler and Michelle Fowler, Pete's wife Kathy Beale and their son Ian Beale. Smith used her personal memories of East End residents she met when researching Victorian squares. Ethel Skinner was based on
EastEnders in popular culture The BBC withdrew its threat to sue after BT paid it an undisclosed five-figure amount. Leslie Grantham also appeared in an advertisement for Radox Everfresh in the late 1990s. The first line of the commercial was "Not so Dirty Den now, eh?", and the final line was "Life after soap... no problem". A promotional picture of Pauline Fowler and Joe Macer was used on the official "Torchwood" website, in a fictional magazine article about aliens. Ben Rawson Jones compares the arguments between Gwen and Rhys in "Torchwood" to "the kitchen sink melodrama usually seen in EastEnders". The Office for National