Mo was portrayed as a battle-axe. Author Hilary Kingsley has described Mo as a "tough, interfering busybody with a will of iron and a face of stone [...] To her grandchildren she was always indulgent, but to Frank she was always the boss, a woman with a whim or iron." Kingsley surmised that "only slowly did Walford begin to see a softer side to hard bitten old Mo". Kingsley described Mo as a woman who sought status, suggesting that she wished to be "Queen Bee" when she moved to Walford and regarded Frank's new wife Pat as "nothing more than a pushy interloper". Initial storylines centred upon clashes between Pat and Mo, with Frank trying to find a compromise between the bickering women in his life. Kingsley has commented that "gradually some sort of compromise was worked out and slowly Mo became more human."