Billy Mitchell (EastEnders) revealed in 2006 that the role was extended by "coincidence and chance": "I was offered four episodes and here I am, about 800 later. [...] Ross Kemp (Grant) said that he was leaving, and there was a gap in the Mitchell family, so they brought me back to do stuff towards his leaving. After that they offered me a year." Billy was reintroduced in 1999, making recurring appearances. He was involved in the leaving storyline of Grant Mitchell in October 1999, before returning later in the year as a regular character. When Billy was first introduced, he was depicted as
Geoffrey Kemp traditional society that was not happy with Americans soldiers in the country, training its military in modern warfare. In the late 1970s, Kemp became a Consultant to the Office of Program Analysis and Evaluation in the Pentagon working for Paul Wolfowitz, the Persian Deputy Assistant Secretary. During that time, Kemp was one of the authors of a study on the vulnerability of the American position in the Persian Gulf. Together with Dennis Ross and others, Kemp wrote the first draft of the report asserting dangers to U.S. interests of what they believed to be growing Soviet Union involvement with countries