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
Pauline Fowler [son] like a mother tiger with her cub." The character's narrative also included various feuds, most notably with the soap's lothario Den Watts, a family-friend who gets Pauline's daughter Michelle pregnant at the age of 16. "EastEnders" pulled in the biggest television audience of the 1980s when over 30 million people watched the 1986 Christmas Day episode in which Pauline discovers that Den is the father of her granddaughter, Vicki. Wendy Richard has commented on the hostility between the characters "once Pauline realised that Dennis was Vicki's father, she was out to get him one way or another" and actor