Jamie Mitchell & Phil Mitchell
Eastenders (Episode dated 10th November 1998)
AKA one of my favourite Jamie and Phil moments 🥺 Hopefully the first of many gifs of my boy Jamie Mitchell! Inspired by the wonderful @messymindofmine, who dropped into my DMs to let me know that I'm not alone in loving this super underrated character~! 💖
zoe’s desperate and delusional behaviour is so embarrassing honestly. a little bit of insanity and cheeky helping of delirium are understandable because dennis is stupid sexy but also he is just A Dude. a dude named dennis at that
Watching Classic EastEnders and it's the whole Kat-Zoe reveal and I have to say, that while I understand Zoe's shock her treatment of Kat is disgusting. And the fact that the whole family is more concerned about Zoe that Kat makes me so fucking angry.
A little more on Ian Lavender, who passed away February 2nd, 2024, aged 77.
Just one of the abiding friendships between the cast of Dad’s Army was between Ian Lavender himself (born 1946) and John Laurie (born 1897).
Private Pike was Ian Lavender’s first ongoing television role, while John Laurie, a Great War veteran, had appeared in British films dating back to 1929, and was a leading Shakespearean actor on stage.
John Laurie was godfather to Ian Lavender’s children, and they were both dab hands at The Times crossword. John Laurie passed away in 1980, at the age of 83.
Ian Lavender always expressed his gratitude for having worked on Dad's Army, but admitted that typecasting had held back his career, particularly in movies, although he did appear in a handful of classic mid-seventies British films, including Carry on Behind, Not Now, Comrade, and Confessions of a Pop Performer.
He reprised his Dad's Army character, Frank Pike, in a BBC radio sequel, It Sticks Out Half a Mile, and he starred alongside Mollie Sugden in one of David Croft's rare catastrophes, the sci-fi sitcom Come Back Mrs Noah. He featured with Jimmy Edwards in The Glums, and had a series of memorable cameos on British television, including in Yes Minister, Goodnight Sweetheart, and Keeping Up Appearances.
According to his obituary in The Guardian:
"...In addition to various live Dad’s Army productions, his stage work included the Peter Hall Company’s The Merchant of Venice, with Dustin Hoffman as Shylock in 1989, touring as the Narrator in The Rocky Horror Show in 2005, Monsignor Howard in the London Palladium production of the musical Sister Act in 2009, The Shawshank Redemption at the Edinburgh fringe in 2013, and his own one-man show of reminiscences, Don’t Tell Him, Pike..."
He appeared in 245 episodes of Eastenders, and was one of only two of the original Dad's Army cast members, along with Frank Williams (the Vicar), to appear in the 2016 feature film.
Here Ian Lavender recalls an unintentionally comical appearance on New Zealand radio some years after the final episode of Dad's Army.
Play for Today: Not for the Likes of Us (BBC, 1980)
"It was a relief when she married you, I'm telling you. That'll calm her down, I thought, stop these crazy ideas. Mind you, I can't say that it did. Do you remember that spiritualism craze she had, when she was carrying Paul? Eight months pregnant and trying to contact other worlds! I said to her, that baby will be born funny in the head."
I just hate that every time things are going good, I just mess it all up again.
Yeah, you can be really annoying like that. But you're also kind... you're funny, you're the- you're the best mum our little boy could ever ask for.
Is it mad that I want nothing more than for Eastenders to do another 'ghost returns to haunt a character' like what they did for Ian Beale for Children In Need? Have Dennis Rickman haunt Sharon and/or Jamie Mitchell haunting Sonia and I'd die - the angst </3 Maybe I'll just end up writing an one-shot about it xD
the parallel between den returning from the dead and emerging from the shadows on 29 september 2003 vs. sharon unexpectedly emerging from the shadows on 18 february 2005 is art and should be studied actually