"EastEnders" has been known to feature a 'comedy double-act', originally demonstrated with the characters of Dot and Ethel, whose friendship was one of the serial's most enduring. Other examples include Paul Priestly (Mark Thrippleton) and Trevor Short (Phil McDermott), In 1989 especially, characters were brought in who were deliberately conceived as comic or light-hearted. Such characters included Julie Cooper (Louise Plowright)—a brassy maneater; Marge Green—a batty older lady played by veteran comedy actress Pat Coombs; Trevor Short (Phil McDermott)—the "village idiot"; his friend, northern heartbreaker Paul Priestly (Mark Thrippleton); wheeler-dealer Vince Johnson (Hepburn Graham) and Laurie Bates (Gary Powell), who became Pete Beale's (Peter Dean) sparring partner. The majority of "EastEnders" characters are working-class. Middle-class characters do occasionally become regulars, but have been less successful and rarely become long-term characters. In the main, middle-class characters exist as villains, such as James Wilmott-Brown (William Boyde), May Wright (Amanda Drew), Stella Crawford (Sophie Thompson), Yusef Khan (Ace Bhatti) and Gray Atkins (Toby-Alexander Smith) or are used to promote positive liberal influences, such as Colin Russell (Michael Cashman) or Rachel Kominski (Jacquetta May).