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More than 100 tower blocks across the capital have been built with prefabricated concrete panels known as a Large Panel System (LPS), many of which could have safety issues,a BBC London investigation has found.

Not all LPS blocks are necessarily dangerous but their structure means they are more prone to defects and weaknesses. Blocks which have been strengthened or had remediation work may now be considered structurally sound.

Some LPS buildings have also degraded and cracks have developed in the panels, which poses a fire safety risk as the compartmentation fire containment system could fail.

It is a problem decades in the making, but now the full extent and impact of LPS is coming to light, what can be done?

Concerns over LPS buildings come afterRonan Point in Newham, east London, partially collapsedfollowing a gas explosion in 1968, in which four people died.

The same year, the government advised councils thatsuch buildings should be strengthenedand gas systems should be removed, as the structures were vulnerable to collapse if there was ever an explosion.

Since then some LPS buildings have also degraded and cracks have developed in the panels, which poses a fire safety risk as the compartmentation fire containment system could fail.

Following the Grenfell Tower fire in 2017, which claimed the lives of 72 people, risks in LPS buildings were raised again in a letter from government to local authorities, and in 2018 inthe Hackitt Review.

Data from the 31 London local authorities which responded to BBC London’s request, showed they own 134 residential LPS tower blocks in the capital – and more than 30 of them still have gas systems installed.

Some may have had remediation work carried out but the full extent of this is unclear.

Westminster City Council said it has a programme to remove gas supplies from 24 of the 26 gas-supplied LPS blocks it owns by October 2025.

Patrick Hayes, from the Institution for Structural Engineers, explained there was a part-funded scheme set up after the Ronan Point tragedy and many buildings in England were strengthened.

However, issues with record-keeping mean it’s not possible to ascertain how many participated in the scheme.

The issue doesn’t just affect the capital – in the last few years residents have become aware of LPS in their tower blocks, or been evacuated from them inBristolandBrighton.

Under the Building Safety Act 2022, tower block owners are legally required to register their building and tell the regulator if their building is an LPS one, as well as stating whether they have a gas system installed.

However, it is unclear how many LPS buildings exist in England, how many of them have gas systems installed, and how many of the buildings have not had full remediation work carried out on them.

Members of the public cansearch the registerbut it does not list information relating to LPS.

Hannah Brack, who has researched and campaigned on LPS buildings for decades, fears there are many and said: “The councils have, in many cases, been relying on consultants who have relied on previous surveys and reports.

“I feel things are undoubtedly changing but this does not make even one more night sleeping in a flat in an LPS block any safer.”

For some urgent remediation work is now needed on LPS buildings.

Mr Hayes said LPS buildings “tended to be tied (attached) in just one direction – so that allows the wall panels when they get hot to expand and move away from the floor panels, which create these gaps”.

They can be remediated with various work including to strengthen the ties, and short-term repairs like filling cracks with fire-proof mastic.

But it is not clear how long-term a solution this is as the buildings continue to age and potentially degrade further.

Since new legislation required the registration of LPS buildings, Mr Hayes said those responsible for them “can get called in by the Health and Safety executive and Building Safety Regulator… to ensure they’ve been assessed and the risks have been managed”.

“What we would say to residents is make sure your landlord is properly assessing them,” he added.

Some councils which own LPS buildings have also put in extra safety measures such as a ban on gas bottles, and more recently, lithium batteries. Others have a 24-hour waking watch.

The cost of remediation is high and many councils are opting to demolish the LPS blocks they own and build new homes.

In Edmonton, north London, some leaseholders in Walbrook House had to pay for new boilers when the gas system was replaced with an electric one, but claimedthey were not fully informed that the changes were made because the building was constructed with LPS.

Those leaseholders are in the process of being bought out. But building surveyor and fire safety analyst Arnold Tarling inspected Walbrook House and said he believed they may have a strong case if they challenged the council.

“It’s shocking the way leaseholders have been treated,” he said.

“They are not being offered enough. What can you get in London for £231,000?”

Enfield Council denied misinformation, and said it supported leaseholders on a case-by-case basis.

“The buyout deal from Enfield Council to leaseholders offers good market value plus a home loss and disturbance payment, and all fees are compensated for.

“If a financial assessment determines they are unable to replace their property with something similar the Council will help them explore shared equity options.”

Meanwhile in Peckham, south London, temporary tenants were moved onto the Ledbury Estate after safety changes were made due to LPS in the blocks.

Many of them complained of cracks in the walls, cold, water leaks, electrical issues and damp.

Independent housing consultant Tony Bird, who has worked with social housing tenants for decades, added those tenants “have been badly treated and should be due compensation for what they have been through”.

A London Fire Brigade spokesperson said despite the Grenfell Tower fire and subsequent inquiry, many people are still living in potentially unsafe high-rise buildings which was “not an acceptable situation”.

“The issue extends beyond compartmentation issues caused by the use of LPS buildings or the well documented risks around flammable cladding,” they continued.

“Many properties face challenges, such as unsafe materials used for insulation, problems with ventilation and missing cavity barriers.

“Remediation measures must be prioritised to address critical safety concerns, such as those associated with Large Panel System constructions.

Mr Tarling said if residents suspect their blocks may be LPS buildings they “should be asking your landlord, ‘is it a risk?’”

Ms Brack said: “There needs to be a spirit of co-operation and information sharing between the boroughs, as they are all about to spend a fortune on consultants who will be telling them the same thing.

“Any reports should be made available for reference by all the boroughs, perhaps via the Building Safety Regulator who I know have been gathering as much info on LPS as they can.”

The Institution of Structural Engineers said under new legislation owners of higher-risk buildings (HRBs), including all tower blocks, must apply for a safety certificate from the Building Safety Regulator.

This includes assessments on structural performance in a fire or after an accidental event, but the regulator said it will take time as there are thousands of HRBs to be assessed by 2029.

While leaseholders who own properties in the blocks are being bought out, and tenants are being rehoused by local authorities, some councils say this is being made more complicated amid financial struggles and a short supply of social housing.

Councillor Grace Williams from London Councils, which represents local authorities across the capital, said the situation “can’t be justified”.

“The right thing to do is for the councils to be clear what the situation is, with tenants and leaseholders, and be clear about the actions they’re taking,” she explained.

“We also know we need to work even harder with the government, the Greater London Authority and the regulator.”

A Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government spokesperson said: “We take the safety and security of people living in high rise buildings incredibly seriously.

“Building owners have a responsibility to make sure their buildings are safe, including [those] built with Large Panel Systems.

“Where decants occur, we play an active role in supporting local regulators and residents, and the safety and wellbeing of residents is at the core of all our work.”

The BBC understands the government will make an announcement on hospital funding in England next week.

Chancellor Rachel Reeves announced in July that a review would be carried out on hospital, road and rail projects as part of an attempt toplug a £22bn hole in public finances.

This includes hundreds of millions of pounds previously promised to London hospitals, including St Helier Hospital in Sutton.

A spokesperson from the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) said the government planned to “rebuild our NHS”.

St Helier Hospital had been told it would get new buildings as well as upgrades to existing ones, but staff have said this is yet to happen.

The hospital, which first opened its doors to patients in 1941, has been the subject of funding promises under a number of governments.

In 2003, Tony Blair’s Labour announced a plan calledBetter Health Care Closer to Home.

In 2010, Tory George Osborne promised £200m towardsfunding new hospital schemes, including at St Helier Hospital.

In 2020, the government under Boris Johnson promised up to £500m to St Helier in the New Hospitals Programme.

Then in 2023, the BBC reportedministers aimed to have six hospitals ready for 2025- one which was St Helier, part of Epsom and St Helier University Hospitals NHS Trust.

Dr Beccy Suckling, chief medical officer at the hospital, said the building had a series of problems including windows that won’t close properly, leading to damp.

She said more than 600 operations had to be cancelled last year because of ventilation difficulties in the theatres.

Dr Suckling believes the age of the building – which was completed in 1942 – is the root cause of the problems.

Dr Pauline Swift, consultant nephrologist at St Helier Hospital, said the lifts often break down, creating more trouble for patients.

She also said she went to see a patient in a dialysis unit and the windows were boarded up because they had come out.

She added: “This is not a way to be looking after patients in the 21st Century.”

The DHSC agreed that buildings and equipment across the NHS “have been left to crumble”, disrupting care and hindering staff.

After coming to power, Labour said it would be looking at the feasibility of the future of 25 projects that were part of theNew Hospital Programmein England, as promised by Conservative Boris Johnson when he was prime minister.

The DHSC said: “We inherited a New Hospital Programme which was unrealistic and unaffordable, with the funding due to run out in March 2025.

“We are working up a timeline that is affordable and honest.”

The refurbishment of a 161-year old central London bridge is under way.

Hungerford railway bridge, which takes trains over the River Thames between the South Bank and London Charing Cross station, is being restored by Network Rail to “protect it for the future”.

It is a steel truss railway bridge, with two, more recent, pedestrian bridges alongside it. Network Rail said all of the original metalwork will be retained.

Work is due to be completed by the end of winter 2028.

The current bridge has spans – the horizontal space between two supports – made from wrought iron lattice girders – or beams – dating from 1864.

The refurbishment work will be carried out in two phases, with the first phase on the Southbank and the south side of the river from January 2025 to January 2026.

The second phase will take place from January 2026 to winter 2028.

David Davidson, Network Rail’s Kent route director said they would not be closing the bridge to trains during the first phase of works.

He added: “Many of the bridges on Britain’s railway are from the Victorian era and being responsible for this national heritage is both a privilege and a challenge.

“Some of the structures are very old, so are vulnerable to corrosion and damage from weather.

Mr Davidson said barges would be used to deliver and remove waste materials to Surrey Pier for the period of the works, to avoid creating extra traffic and the resulting pollution.

A statue of famed 19th Century poet Lord Byron that has been marooned on a traffic island on Park Lane in central London for decades could be relocated.

The Byron Society was awarded more than £230,000 by the National Lottery towards the cost of moving the National Byron Memorial Statue.

The Grade II listed bronze sculpture created in 1880 became inaccessible to the public after Park Lane became a three-lane dual carriageway in the 1960s.

The Byron Society is seeking planning permission from Westminster City Council to move the statue to a space near Hyde Park’s Victoria Gate.

If permission is granted the statue will be placed in a landscaped location already approved by the Royal Parks, which looks after the central London park.

The current Lord Byron, president of the Byron Society, said the society was “absolutely thrilled and immensely grateful” to The National Lottery Heritage Fund.

He said the lottery and its players were “helping us rescue Byron and put him back to where he can be appreciated”.

The Heritage of London Trust is supporting the restoration, which it said would involve the “removal of dirt, grease, grime, detritus, and guano”.

It added that the bronze would be re-patinated to match the original finish as closely as possible.

The statue was discussed in the House of Lords in April 2024 when a descendant of Lord Byron cited a government pledge made in 1958 during a debate on the then new Park Lane traffic scheme.

Lord Lytton, Byron’s great-great-great-grandson, said the bronze likeness “languishes” in an isolated spot.

Lord Byron was a popular Romantic figure in Victorian Britain, described as “mad, bad and dangerous to know” by one of his lovers, Lady Caroline Lamb.

He was born in London’s Holles Street, off Oxford Street, in 1788.

He died from a fever in 1824 in Missolonghi, in modern day Greece, after joining Greek insurgents the year prior to fight a war of independence against the Ottoman Empire.

During 2014, hundreds of photographers, amateurs and professionals, Londoners and tourists, snapped images of 58,000 London streets. The vast project – inspired by the novel Bleeding London – culminated in an exhibition at City Hall and prompted imitation by camera enthusiasts elsewhere in Europe. It was one of the high points of the 50-year career of the author Geoff Nicholson, who has died aged 71.

Bleeding London was the 10th of 17 novels that Nicholson wrote between 1987 and 2024, alongside 10 works of nonfiction, a plethora of short stories and anthology contributions, and several popular blogs. His surreal, complex and sometimes transgressive comedies were only erratically successful from a commercial point of view, although his third novel, What We Did on Our Holidays (1990) was turned into a 2007 film, Permanent Vacation, starring David Carradine.

But several of his works won critical acclaim. Bleeding London (1997) itself and his debut novel, Street Sleeper, were shortlisted for literary prizes. Bedlam Burning (2002) was a New York Times notable book of the year and Day Trips to the Desert (1993) was a Radio 4 Book at Bedtime.

Nicholson did not capitalise on these early successes and remained – unlike the more celebrated figures to whom he was sometimes compared, such as Jonathan Coe or Will Self – something of an outsider, at least in the UK. But his work attracted a cult following, nowhere more so than in Los Angeles, where he lived and worked between 2006 and 2018.

Living near Hollywood with Dian Hanson, his second wife, whom he married in 2006, Nicholson was a contributing editor for the Los Angeles Review of Books and an established presence on the local literary scene. It was there that he began to write more insistently about maps and walking – exploring the relationship between emotions, behaviour and geographic location – a focus which has chimed with growing interest in psychogeography.

Nicholson was born in Hillsborough, a working-class suburb of Sheffield, the only son of Geoffrey, a carpenter, and his wife, Violet. After passing his 11-plus, he attended the city’s King Edward VII grammar school, and then, from 1972, Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, where he studied English. After a further degree in drama at Essex University, he settled in and around London, working in bookshops and pursuing literary ambitions in the evenings.

He scripted a play for Radio 4, wrote travel pieces, food and theatre reviews for Time Out and sundry other outlets and sold sketches for TV shows such as Not the Nine O’Clock News and Chris Tarrant’s Saturday Stayback. He had stories published in Ambit, the quarterly counterculture literary magazine. In 1987 JG Ballard, the science fiction writer whom Nicholson succeeded as Ambit’s fiction editor, described Street Sleeper as “witty, zany and brilliantly comic”.

The lead characters in Nicholson’s novels are often slightly lost, unsure what to make of what is happening to them. Not infrequently their dilemmas lead to violence. Usually, the denouement is humorous, with multilayered plots resolved in elaborate, improbable, even apocalyptic farces. Having little control over their lives, his characters seek comfort in an intense attachment to things. Nicholson writes a lot about – variously – the electric guitar, deserts and cocktails.

He had a lifelong love of the Volkswagen Beetle, and collected hundreds of toy models of the car. The motor features prominently in two of his novels. Sexual fetishism crops up a lot too, most notably in Footsucker (1995), whose hero is aroused by women’s feet, and Sex Collectors, a work of nonfiction published in 2006 that is based on interviews with collectors of pornography.

But as Nicholson got older, his engagements with the world became simpler. Walking is the theme of five of his last eight published works, albeit that in The Miranda (2017), the perambulation comes only after an episode of ultra-violence. The note, though, in this later writing is gentler and the prose ever more crystalline.

Nicholson could dissect and explain the most abstract ideas. As one New York Times reviewer put it, he was “the rare writer capable of making reference to Jacques Lacan [the French psychoanalyst] without inspiring the reader to toss his book out the window”.

It was a time that coincided with a calmer period in his life. After Dian and he divorced, Nicholson returned to Britain in 2018 and settled in the Essex town of Manningtree. Shortly afterwards, he was diagnosed with a rare blood cancer. For the most part that was controlled and he had a new partner, Caroline Gannon, whom he had first met during the Bleeding London project.

He went out walking, every day, padding streets near and far. Always armed with a camera, he did his research, took photos, picked up items of interest – an unusually coloured rock, a discarded magazine or an item in a junk shop that took his eye.

Much of this discovery fed its way into The Suburbanist, published in 2021, in which Nicholson poked fun at the staid, predictable routine of lower middle-class life and the arrogance of its intellectual detractors. In his final work, the nonfiction Walking on Thin Air (2023), he wrote candidly about his illness, although it was more a celebration of life than of mortality. He did not expect this to be his swansong, but A Life’s Journey in 99 Steps proved to be a prophetic subtitle.

He is survived by Caroline.

Geoffrey Joseph Nicholson, writer, born 4 March 1953; died 18 January 2025

A fire that tore through a luxury London hotel popular with celebrities was caused by wood falling from a pizza oven.

The Chiltern Firehouse, which had been due to host a post-Bafta film awards party on Sunday evening, was partially destroyed by the fire on Friday

Flames spread through the four-storey hotel in central London via ducting, damaging parts of the ground floor and half of the second floor and destroying the third floor and roof, the London fire brigade (LFB) said on Monday.

The fire service said the blaze started accidentally “by burning wood falling from a pizza oven and igniting the void between the basement and ground floor”.

The Marylebone venue was formerly a fire station, which was repurposed as a five-star hotel and restaurant, which is a regular celebrity haunt.

LFB’s assistant commissioner, Paul McCourt, said: “Crews worked incredibly hard for over eight hours in arduous conditions. Presented with a complex fire in a historically significant building, formerly Manchester Square fire station, firefighters successfully contained the fire, preventing it from spreading to neighbouring properties.”

About 100 people were evacuated and there were no injuries as a result of the blaze, which was tackled by about 125 firefighters using 20 fire engines.

‘Cor, stinks in here, dunnit?” At 7pm on 19 February 1985, we heard Simon May’s now-familiar theme tune and watched those wriggly River Thames titles for the first time – followed by that aromatic opening line of dialogue.

The BBC’s new soap opera was its attempt to make a mass-market, twice-weekly rival to ITV’s Coronation Street. Co-created by the producer Julia Smith and the writer Tony Holland, the gritty saga was set in a Victorian square in the fictional east London borough of Walford. Working titles for the show included Square Dance, Round the Houses and London Pride. They settled on EastEnders.

Overnight ratings were an impressive 17m. Audiences would peak at an astonishing 30m the next year. To this day, four EastEnders episodes feature in the UK’s Top 10 most-watched TV programmes of all time (not including sports or news coverage).

After more than 7,000 episodes, the BBC is celebrating this week’s 40th anniversary with misty-eyed documentaries, interactive storylines and a fully live edition. Here, we mark the milestone by recounting its 40 most memorable moments, aided by its creators and stars. Altogether now: “Get outta my pub!”

Our arrival in E20 was a portent of the dark drama for which the soap would become known. Neighbours broke into 23 Albert Square, worried about Reg Cox (Johnnie Clayton). They found the pensioner dead in his armchair, killed by “Nasty” Nick Cotton (John Altman) for his war medals. Welcome to Walford.

The teenage pregnancy of Michelle Fowler (played by Susan Tully) prompted the show’s first talking-point mystery: the identity of the father. Four Walford men were in the frame. At a canalside rendezvous, it was revealed to be the Queen Vic’s publican, Den Watts (Leslie Grantham). He wasn’t nicknamed “Dirty Den” for nothing.

Among the most famous scenes in ’Enders history. A record 30.1 million viewers spat out their Babycham in shock when dastardly Den handed his wife, Angie (Anita Dobson), divorce papers and growled a festive platitude for the ages.

Driven to desperation by unemployment, the Fowler patriarch, Arthur (Bill Treacher), “borrowed” the Christmas Club money to pay for Michelle’s wedding. His mental collapse culminated with “Arfur” smashing up the decorations and falling in a sobbing heap by the tree.

The actor turned activist Michael Cashman sparked media hysteria before his character even appeared on screen. When Cashman was cast as the gay graphic designer Colin Russell, the Sun ran the front-page splash “EastBenders”. “In the midst of the Aids pandemic, Thatcher’s government and widespread homophobia, the fact that they were introducing a gay character at all knocked me sideways,” says Cashman. “It took huge courage from the BBC. That headline was a foretaste of what was to come.”

The News of the World outed Cashman’s real-life partner, Paul (“I was fair game, but to come after Paul was unforgivable”), even identifying the area where the couple lived. Within hours of the edition hitting newsstands, a brick was thrown through their window. “In a strange way, it gave me strength,” says Cashman. “As I picked up the brick, I vividly remember thinking: ‘If you think you can intimidate me …’”

Colin was already trailblazing as the first openly gay character in a British soap. He made TV history when he kissed his boyfriend, Barry (Gary Hailes), on the forehead. “The enormity of it didn’t occur to us. There were questions in parliament. Rent-a-quote politicians said the show should be taken off-air. But judging by the many letters I received, the public was much more tolerant. At a time when there were no role models on TV, it made gay people feel less alone. We broke stereotypes and helped push forward positive change.”

A year later, Colin kissed his new boyfriend, Guido (Nicholas Donovan), on the lips. “Apart from Piers Morgan, who described it in the Sun as ‘a love scene between yuppie poofs’, the second kiss passed without much outcry. The first one caused a storm. This time, there was hardly a breeze.” (Morgan subsequently apologised for his offensive remarks.)

Cashman capitalised on his primetime fame to lead the campaign against section 28 – government legislation that banned the teaching, publication or promotion of homosexuality. “To their credit, not once did the BBC warn me off. The only person I checked with was June Brown, who played Dot Cotton, because we were supposed to be filming together on the day of the protest march. June was a one nation Tory, but she arranged for me to get time off. That moment defined the rest of my life. If it wasn’t for that, I wouldn’t have founded Stonewall with Ian McKellen or be in the House of Lords now. EastEnders helped me find my voice – and the conviction to use it.”

The show ventured into cockney gangster territory when bad boy Den was shot by a hired hitman, concealing his gun in a bunch of daffodils. The publican fell into the canal and was presumed dead.

In a groundbreaking Boxing Day episode, Mark Fowler (Todd Carty) told his parents he was HIV positive – the first major soap character to be diagnosed. The storyline was written in collaboration with the Terrence Higgins Trust.

It has to be a big scandal to be awarded the “gate” suffix. This love triangle inspired by Tristan and Isolde made the grade. Grant (Ross Kemp) and Sharon Mitchell’s stormy marriage led to her crying on the shoulder of her brother-in-law, Phil (Steve McFadden). It soon tipped over into an affair. Sharon drunkenly confessed one night to her best mate, unaware they were being recorded. A devastated Grant discovered the tape and played it to a packed pub at Phil’s engagement party – before drying his eyes and beating his big brother unconscious.

“Sharon and Phil always had a spark,” says Letitia Dean, who plays Sharon. “It had been breadcrumbed throughout, so it was exciting to bring it to fruition. None of us predicted what an impact it would have. Reaction went through the roof. People came up to me in supermarkets and said: ‘She’s a naughty one, that Sharon. But I get it; Phil is much kinder to her.’ I’m still asked about it to this day – and it happened over 30 years ago.”

The pub showdown took two days to film. “Most of the cast were involved and you need to capture the drama from multiple perspectives. When Grant played the tape, you could’ve heard a pin drop.” She laughs. “Trust me, it’s rare to have complete silence in the Vic during filming.”

Phil’s fiancee, Kathy, reacted to the betrayal by slapping Sharon and calling her a slut. “Back in the day, we didn’t have a stunt coordinator and slapped each other for real,” says Dean. “All I said to Gillian Taylforth, who plays Kathy, was: ‘Mind my ear.’ The fashion was very much of its time, so I had big earrings that would make Pat Butcher proud. I’m old school: I prefer a real slap for authenticity. But it was quite a gentle, showbiz one.”

The slow-burn storyline took two years, pulling in 25 million viewers at its peak. “That’s what I love about EastEnders,” says Dean. “Plots are given time to build and then bang, the drama hits.” After four decades, Dean still savours those episode-closing “doof doof” moments: “You have to hold the position and the emotion for longer than usual. After the director calls cut, I always burst out laughing.”

“You bitch!” “You cow!” A textbook battle of the matriarchs erupted and peroxide-blond blows were traded as Peggy Mitchell (Barbara Windsor) fought Pat Butcher (Pam St Clement) for the affections of Frank (Mike Reid).

“Tiff the Stiff” screamed the Daily Star. When her abusive ex, Grant Mitchell, snatched their daughter, Courtney, the beloved barmaid (played by Martine McCutcheon) chased them across the road and was run over by Frank Butcher.

When an old flame, Saskia (Deborah Sheridan-Taylor), taunted the nightclub owner Steve Owen (Martin Kemp) about aborting his baby, Steve hit her with a marble ashtray, buried her body in Epping Forest and framed his resident DJ. Charming.

The siblings fought over Grant sleeping with Phil’s ex, Kathy. A tearful Phil held Grant at gunpoint, forced him to drive at high speed and the car plummeted into the river. Bang went their no-claims bonus.

Knock knock. Who’s there? Frank on Pat’s doorstep, wearing nothing but a light-up dickie bow. A seduction technique that remains seared in viewers’ memories.

“Dorothy Cotton, I’m arresting you on suspicion of possessing class B drugs.” Dear old Dot became an accidental stoner when she mistook cannabis for herbal tea, served a cuppa to a policeman and got nicked. No wonder she fainted in shock.

The cult heroine Sonia (Natalie Cassidy) will soon depart after a 32-year stint on the show. She was once the centre of a teen pregnancy storyline. The trumpet-playing schoolgirl had no idea she was pregnant – until she went into labour and gave birth to a daughter.

It was decades before the assisted dying debate when terminally ill Ethel Skinner (Gretchen Franklin) begged her best friend, Dot, to help end her life. Conflicted by her Christianity, Dot eventually agreed and they bade an emotional farewell.

The Slater sisters took Albert Square by storm when they arrived in 2000 – except, of course, there was a twist in store. Young Zoe (Michelle Ryan) fell out with protective Kat (Jessie Wallace), storming off with the words: “You can’t tell me what to do. You ain’t my mother.” The country gasped when Kat screamed back: “Yes I am!” It became one of the most quoted lines in soap history.

The gravel-voiced hardman was the subject of a JR-from-Dallas-style whodunnit when he was gunned down on his doorstep by a mystery assailant. The culprit turned out to be his ex-girlfriend Lisa Fowler (Lucy Benjamin). That’ll teach him. (Spoiler: it didn’t teach him.)

Little Mo Slater (Kacey Ainsworth) suffered horribly at the hands of her abusive husband Trevor Morgan (Alex Ferns). On New Year’s Eve, he attacked her yet again and she hit him with an iron in self-defence. Little Mo thought she had killed him, only to return with her sisters to find Trevor gone.

“His first line back had to be: ‘Hello, princess.’ Anything else would have been a letdown,” says the screenwriter Sarah Phelps, who worked on EastEnders for more than a decade, penning nearly 100 episodes. These included the momentous week when the original Queen Vic landlord, Den Watts, swaggered back into Albert Square and surprised his daughter Sharon – who, like 16 million viewers, thought he was long dead.

“Being let loose on such an iconic character was a joy,” says Phelps. “It was so embargoed and secretive. We went for a drink after a script meeting and I left my notes in the pub. I realised in a panic and have never run so fast in my life. Thank God the folder was still there.” In the reunion scene, Sharon is stunned into silence, then vomits in a nightclub toilet. “It was shellshock,” says Phelps. “A bomb exploded in her life. Was she going to throw herself into his arms? No, she’s going to throw up. That’s what I’d do.”

She laughs off accusations that the storyline was far-fetched. “I went on Radio 4 and Mark Lawson asked me: ‘This is nuts, isn’t it?’ I said: ‘Is it?’ Look at John Darwin, the canoe man. Nothing is more implausible than reality. People walk out of their lives all the time. Sometimes, they walk back.”

Dirty Den’s return formed part of an incest storyline. “I was pretty new to EastEnders and pitched an affair between Sharon and Young Dennis, her adoptive brother. This was really taboo. I got letters saying: ‘You are filth! I turned it off and only turned it on again to see who’d written it.’ Then we threw Old Dennis into the mix as well. The old lion comes back to find this new lion on his patch. What a gift to write.”

His homecoming sparked a ratings resurgence and was voted viewers’ favourite soap comeback. Phelps completed the circle 18 months later by writing Den’s second murder – this time for real – by three wronged Walford women: “I wanted it to be mythic. These Furies bringing down vengeance.” Now a Bafta-winner, Phelps says she learned her craft on EastEnders: “Soaps are the crucible of TV. If you can do it on a soap, you can do it anywhere. It’s the people’s theatre. Greek tragedy with acrylic nails. It’s epic, it’s huge and I love it.”

On a vitriolic rant during their Highland honeymoon, Janine Butcher (Charlie Brooks) told the buffoonish Barry Evans (Shaun Williamson) that their marriage was a sham and shoved him off a cliff. As if that wasn’t enough, she followed him down and taunted him as he died.

Festive season is always eventful in the winter wonderland of Walford. So it proved when the extended Branning-Slater family sat down to open their presents in front of the TV. Bradley Branning (Charlie Clements) was given a DVD of his wedding day. Everyone said he should play it – only to be stunned into silence when the footage included the bride, Stacey Slater (Lacey Turner), snogging her father-in-law, Max (Jake Wood).

“As soon as the audience saw that kiss accidentally being captured on a camcorder, it became like a ticking timebomb,” says Turner. “This is EastEnders – of course the affair would be exposed! Nothing stays secret for ever in Albert Square. It wasn’t a case of whether it would come out, but when. The storyline unfurled slowly, so the audience was fully invested. That made it all the more tense.”

The sitting room scene was deeply awkward, as it dawned on different generations what they were watching. “The looks on everyone’s faces were brilliantly excruciating!” says Turner, laughing. “We shot it in only two takes. It was very naturalistic, almost like it was happening in real life.”

“I grew up watching EastEnders with my family and you always knew the Christmas episodes were going to be especially dramatic,” she says. “Filming feels extra special when you know it’s the Christmas Day episode. The response was huge. I was always being told by grannies on the street that Stacey should ‘just settle down with that lovely boy Bradley’, or asking: ‘What are you doing with Max?’ I was constantly getting warned off him by viewers.”

With her husband, Jim Branning (John Bardon), hospitalised with a stroke, Dot recorded a touching half-hour message for him. The Talking-Heads-style monologue remains the soap’s only single-hander episode and earned June Brown a Bafta nod.

Larry Lamb made a textbook villain as the evil Archie Mitchell. When he was fatally bashed over the head with the Queen Vic bust, there was no shortage of suspects. In the show’s first live episode, the killer was unmasked as Stacey Slater.

This storyline saw the closeted Syed Masood (Marc Elliott) conduct a secret affair with Christian Clarke (John Partridge). Syed revealed the truth on the morning of his traditional Pakistani wedding, but his mother, Zainab (Nina Wadia), put pressure on him to go through with it anyway. Cue a spectacular but poignant horseback procession through the square.

After losing custody of his daughter, Louise (then played by Brittany Papple), Phil Mitchell turned to crack. The scenes trended on social media and drew complaints for its pre-watershed drug use. Phil soon accused his mum, Peggy, of loving the Queen Vic more than him and then set the pub on fire. Just say no, kids.

Meme immortality was assured when the vampish Vanessa Gold (Zöe Lucker) realised her lover Max Branning had gone back to his wife. In a jealous rampage, she trashed her own sitting room and stabbed a photo frame while repeatedly muttering: “Bubbly’s in the fridge.”

The plot that drew the biggest backlash in the show’s history. After Ronnie Branning (Samantha Womack) lost her baby, she switched him with Kat Slater’s newborn son. A record 14,000 complaints prompted producers to cut the divisive storyline short.

“I’ve got nothing left!” sobbed Ian Beale (Adam Woodyatt) after his daughter Lucy’s murder. Oddly, he sought comfort in the arms of his arch enemy, Phil Mitchell, who called him “Beale the Squeal” and once flushed his head down the toilet. It become a tear-sodden gif to rival James Van Der Beek blubbing in Dawson’s Creek.

The pub landlord Mick Carter (Danny Dyer) planned a festive proposal to his sweetheart Linda (Kellie Bright), but discovered she had been raped by his “nephew” Dean Wicks (Matt Di Angelo). As Mick tipped over the Christmas dinner table and punched Dean, the immortal words rang out: “He’s your bruvva!”

The 30th anniversary live episode was built around the unmasking of Lucy’s killer. Yet the most memorable moment came when Tanya Branning accidentally asked: “How’s Adam?” when referring to Ian Beale, played by Adam Woodyatt. Jo Joyner gamely tweeted: “At least you know it’s live #gutted”.

Nick Cotton was the bane of his mother’s life. Who could blame Dot for abandoning her religious principles? After scoring heroin for her addict son, which turned out to be “bad gear”, she ignored his pleas for an ambulance to simply “let Jesus decide”.

Sharon tottered into the Arches garage one lunchtime to find her husband Phil Mitchell harbouring a mystery woman. Spotting a discarded sandwich, Sharon muttered: “Cheese and pickle? Basic.” T-shirts were printed. Drag queens lip-synced the line.

Max Branning was wrongly convicted for killing Lucy Beale (then played by Hetti Bywater). The real culprit was Lucy’s younger half-brother. After 10-year-old Bobby (then played by Eliot Carrington) hit his mum, Jane (Laurie Brett), over the head with a hockey stick in rage, he burst into the packed pub and blurted out: “I’ve killed Mum, just like I killed Lucy.” Gasp.

With terminal breast cancer, the Mitchell matriarch, Peggy, returned for a poignant farewell. Hallucinating the smell of cigarette smoke, she saw a vision of old frenemy Pat, “earrings rattling like Marley’s bleedin’ chains”. After Pat promised to stay by her side, Peggy took an overdose of her pills.

Ronnie and Roxy Mitchell (Rita Simons) were fan favourites. Hearts were doubly broken when they were killed off together. After Ronnie’s wedding, they snuck into a swimming pool, swigging from a champagne bottle. Roxy leapt in and failed to resurface. Ronnie tried to rescue her, only to be dragged down by the weight of her bridal gown.

Sharon Mitchell fell for the teen toyboy Keanu Taylor (Danny Walters) while Phil was away doing dodgy deals in Spain. The pair acquired the portmanteau name “Sheanu”. Phil unexpectedly returned as Keanu was tied to the bed with fluffy pink handcuffs. Awkward.

When the Queen Vic won a Thames boat party for being Pub of the Year, it proved anything but a happy occasion. A fun-packed night took in fights, drug overdoses, the boat crashing, Sharon Watts (formerly Mitchell) going into labour and Ian Beale accidentally killing her son. Anchors away.

EastEnders specialises in surprise comebacks. The most recent – and with the longest gap between appearances – was Cindy Beale’s dramatic rise from the dead after 25 years.

“When I got the phone call, I had to sit down,” says Michelle Collins. “I told my agent that the only way it could be believable was if Cindy had faked her death and gone into witness protection. That was exactly what producers pitched. I gasped and went: ‘Oh my God, this could actually work.’ The sole frustration was that I had to keep it secret for a year. I went to rehearsals in a blacked-out car and had a fake name in the script.”

The new Queen Vic landlord, George Knight (Colin Salmon), arrived in the square, still mourning his fabled ex, Rose, who had disappeared without trace. After closing time, he put Seal’s Kiss from a Rose on the pub jukebox and tried to phone her. Cut to a familiar face at a poolside in France, ignoring the call: femme fatale Cindy, who had supposedly died in prison back in 1998.

“It was very camp, like: ta-da, she’s back!” laughs Collins. “I even had a wind machine on my hair. She was the cat that got the cream, sipping rosé by her swimming pool. Who wouldn’t want that life? I assumed I’d be going to France, but it was filmed in Radlett. I might not have signed up if I’d known that! Still, it got an amazing reaction. My phone didn’t stop pinging and ringing. People sang Kiss from a Rose at me. Younger people come up and say: ‘Cindy’s fierce, man, she’s sick.’ I’m like: ‘Thank you?!’”

Collins is a passionate advocate for our soaps. “There’s so much snobbery, but they’re unbeatable for working-class representation and racial diversity,” she says. “For showcasing older women, too. Telling their stories and giving them a voice. You don’t get that in other dramas. I wasn’t sure I’d know how to play Cindy any more, but it was like putting on an old slipper. She’s a survivor. We’ve got that in common. I’ll be raising a lipstick-smeared glass of rosé on the anniversary. Just don’t ask if I’ll be there in another 40 years!”

EastEnders has a strong tradition of two-hander episodes. The latest classic came when Yolande Trueman (Angela Wynter) told her husband, Patrick (Rudolph Walker), about her sexual assault by their pastor. Both performances were heartbreaking.

EastEnders’ final three 40th anniversary episodes will air simultaneously on BBC One and BBC iPlayer on 18-20 February. The first is available now on iPlayer

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For most homeowners a request from a passerby to touch the exterior of their house would probably raise eyebrows. But for the owner of Nina’s House, which is covered with unusual and striking cork insulation panels, it is not only a common occurrence but is welcomed.

The conversations may start with curiosity but much of the time lead to lengthy, passionate discussions on how to make homes more energy efficient, says the house’s owner, Nina Woodcroft. “We are new to the neighbourhood and it has been a really nice way to engage with our new community. A lot of delivery drivers will be like: ‘What’s this?’, and we’ll have a chat for 10 minutes about cork, you know, instead of just like this transactional, thank you, bye.”

Woodcroft and her family moved into their home in south Tottenham, London, at the end of 2023 and it has now been nominated for a number of awards including Don’t Move, Improve and RIBA London. The house was a “leaky” 1970s property built originally as a clergy house. Woodcroft, who runs the design company Nina+Co, decided that instead of an extension they would design a renovation, with the help of architects ROAR, to transform it into an energy-efficient, fossil fuel-free, cosy family home.

“Our architect was saying that it was unusual the way we’ve decided to spend our budget. That most clients would be like, well let’s do a loft conversion, let’s add another floor or let’s do a side return, but the motivator for us was to make what we have already future proof and really efficient,” says Woodcroft.

After removing the gas supply entirely, Woodcroft and her team installed an air source heat pump in the front garden. To maximise the pump’s efficiency the radiators downstairs were stripped out and replaced with underfloor heating. Sheep wool, wood fibre and a recycled plastic fleece, with cork granules, were used to insulate the home internally. The annual energy bill is about £1,088, significantly below the national average, with only electricity used.

They chose dark expanded cork, an increasingly popular building material, to cover the exterior of the house because of its insulating properties, sustainability as a material, and aesthetic appeal.

“The way that it’s manufactured is cork granules, bits of the bark of the cork oak tree are heated and pressed into a panel at the same time. Something is released called suberin, a natural substance as it’s heated, which is what sticks those cork granules together. So there is no added binder. And that’s what makes that product really natural,” says Woodcroft.

The inside of the property, designed with running children in mind, is as thought through as the property’s exterior, with joinery made from local and reclaimed timbers, kitchen countertops constructed from recycled plastic and a kitchen island formed from a London plane tree that was felled in Soho Square by Westminster council.

“I feel grounded and connected in this house because of the natural materials I think. It’s warm underfoot, which my feet really appreciate. The house feels enveloping and calming, like a little retreat from the busy world outside,” says Woodcroft.

The design company was born out of Woodcroft’s frustration with the lack of care for the environmental impact of materials used in the design industry. Nina’s House is the latest in a string of projects by Nina+Co to transform property interiors into sensual, textured spaces with a minimal environmental impact, such as the interiors for the restaurant Silo in Hackney Wick, east London, the world’s first zero-waste restaurant and winner of a Michelin green star. The Silo design used offcuts of timber, foraged seaweed, mycelium (a biodegradable fungal material), and crushed glass bottles.

Woodcroft says: “I am kind of always thinking about what life this [material] is going to have next: a restaurant, a shop, a home … it will have a certain lifespan that’s actually not very long in the grand scheme of things of the planet. And so I’m always trying to think what’s the next life of this and how to retain longevity and value in something.”

She hopes her renovation will inspire others to be more conscious of the types of materials used in property design and take small steps to make their homes more sustainable and energy efficient.

“I’m really up for sharing knowledge with people … Not everyone will have the financial resources to do a project like this, or the time and the energy because they’re busy with work and just need to pick a floor … but if it can inspire just doing one little thing, swap out one material, that would be amazing.”

They’re bright yellow, small, electric and look like a chunky golf cart and there are 10 of them now in Fulham.

Called Neighbourhood Electric Vehicles (NEVs), they are from a small company called Yo-Go and you might see more of them in London soon.

They cost 20p a minute to hire and you have to return them to the area from where you picked them up. They have a maximum speed of 20mph and you have to be over 25 years old to drive them. You book them via an app.

Hammersmith & Fulham Council has said they can be parked anywhere free of charge.

Sam Bailey is the CEO and an inventor. His vision is to create a safe, pollution-free way of getting around for everyone. Soon the scheme in Fulham will expand to 50 vehicles.

Previously he invented a clip-on leak detection system and a thermal imaging stove monitoring system. Now he has turned his attention to urban transport.

The project has taken four years so far and the starting premise was what could they do to reduce congestion.

“What we are trying to do is create a different mode of transport, that is more affordable for people to drive a low-emission vehicle. And a vehicle that makes the streets more pleasant and safer for other road users so for cyclists and pedestrians,” Mr Bailey says.

“We want a vehicle that they feel safe interacting with. And what we also trying to do is reduce congestion. So by making the vehicles smaller, the traffic flows better, there’s less constraints on parking, and that benefits everyone in the city.”

Pay-as-you-go electric vehicle hire is not new and certainly in London there are plenty of different options.

Some cities have been trying to encourage “micro-mobility”. They want low-polluting, relatively inexpensive transport modes that help get people out of cars. But sometimes there are consequences.

In London, e-bikes like Lime are a regular sight, although how they are parked has annoyed some councils and other pavement users.

There are also docked Transport for London electric hire bikes.

There are also trials of e-scootersin some London boroughs, although private e-scooters are illegal and critics say regulation has not kept up with the increase in use.

Paris banned rental electric scooters in response to a rising number of people being injured and killed in the French capital.

The existing schemes in London do have limitations, though, when there’s more than one person or if you want to pick up some shopping. Some people are also nervous using e-bikes and e-scooters. Could these buggies fill a gap between them and motor vehicles?

The buggies are relatively cheap at £6,000 with a range of 35 miles. They are road legal and have number-plates. They also have solar panels on their roof to extend the range.

We gave the buggies a try. And at risk of sounding like an advertisement, the buggies are very easy to use and nippy. You do get some strange looks from other road users and there is definitely a film-set vibe about them. They feel more robust than a golf buggy.

In 2004 when her husband, the jazz musician and writer George Melly, was diagnosed with dementia and lung cancer, Diana Melly was asked by her brother if she loved George. When she got home she looked up the dictionary definition of the word “love” – “to have great attachment to and affection for; and/or in a state of strong emotional and sexual attraction”.

The first definition applied to her current feeling for George, the second to a much earlier one. Through her long, full and sometimes topsy-turvy life, Diana, who has died aged 87, loved many people, in both definitions of the word, but not always, she admitted, in the right order or at the right time.

She was married three times (at 16, 20 and 26), twice divorced, and outside those more conventional arrangements there were numerous boyfriends and lovers (some of them adorable, many not).

Her life during the 1960s was of the kind you see in films – women getting on to planes with no shoes on, and lots of hash, LSD, kaftans and sex. Her “romantic life” was distracting, as it should be, but was often distorted by her sometimes bad choices and the fact that whether girlfriend, lover or wife, she took to looking after her various sweethearts, and often at the expense of her three children, one born from each marriage.

Her relationships with men were marked by the dynamics of the time. George and Diana were married in 1963 and for the first 10 years of their 45-year marriage, she put all her energy into being attractive to him “so that he would not look away” and also made herself indispensable to him by managing his tour diary, his transport, his finances, his meals, the various homes they shared together and later his complicated medication. George called her Miss Perfect.

Her writing career, which began with a semi-autobiographical novel, The Girl in the Picture (1977), was initially born out of Diana’s need to establish herself outside the definition of “wife of George”, but went on to become an almost addictive form of self-expression and therapeutic protection.

There was a further novel, The Goosefeather Bed (1979); a small pamphlet, I Am a Cypher (2020), a wry, self-aware account of her emotional and intellectual education; and two works of non-fiction, Strictly Ballroom: Tales from the Dancefloor (2015), about what became a mild obsession with ballroom dancing that emerged in her 70s, and a memoir, Take a Girl Like Me (2005), by some distance her most significant publication.

It is an honest book, funny and knowing, and often recounting her own part in her occasional downfalls.

Diana was born in Southampton, Hampshire, the daughter of Geoffrey Dawson, a railway clerk who during her early childhood was on second world war service, and Margaret (nee Turnbull), a cleaner. After the war, the family moved to Essex, where Diana attended Colchester girls’ grammar school. She left, aged 16, having been reprimanded by the head “for letting the school down” after being spotted in the foyer of a smart local hotel with a soldier.

Her first job was in London at the Cabaret Club, a discreet Soho club with a risqué vibe, where rich men could lounge with underclothed women and where John Profumo was later to meet Mandy Rice-Davies. She was paid in tips and Sobranie Black Russian cocktail cigarettes that she took home to her mother, who was working as the housekeeper in a large Hampstead villa, where they shared small lodgings in the basement.

Diana met her first husband, Michael Ashe, whom she married in 1954, at the Cabaret; and she would meet George eight years later at the Colony Room, another famously louche Soho club, no less glamorous than the Cabaret but catering for a more artistically low-life crew (if you don’t count Princess Margaret). After that she worked as an assistant at a ladies haberdashery in Mayfair from where, she once confessed, she stole a pair of white gloves.

In 1971 she began what was to turn into nearly a decade-long stint working at Release, a progressive charity set up by the radical feminist and political activist Caroline Coon and her partner Rufus Harris. Its aim was to help addicts and lobby for the decriminalisation of drugs.

Diana’s roles included making sure there were enough teabags, working the nightshift to take calls from troubled addicts, and fundraising from any source rich enough and willing to donate.

Her major achievements included securing a major donation from the Ford Foundation following a trip to New York in 1973, but, given the hippy-ish “peace’n’love” credo of Release, the gifts sometimes took unlikely forms. Victor Lownes, the Playboy entrepreneur, had been given a large gold cast of a penis by his friend Roman Polanski, the film director, but after the two fell out he donated it to Release. It is not recorded how it got cashed in.

Diana had a tremendous capacity and drive to sort things out. She was good at it and found all sorts of people and things, wastrels and strays, rackety houses and veg patches to apply her sorting-out skills to. There were many pets that required her attention and love – Tuppy, Franny and Neko (the cats), Bobbie and Joey (the Papillon dogs), Danny (the guinea pig), Eggs (the rabbit) and, most adored of all, James Sebastian Fox (the fox). And there were many friends too.

Among others she looked after were the charismatic sprite of a writer Bruce Chatwin, who wrote to her from the US asking if he might come and stay with her at the Tower (the Melly country retreat, an ancient and attractively ramshackle building in the Brecon Beacons, now Bannau Brycheiniog, in Wales).

He enticingly suggested: “We can both write during the day and share all the cooking.” His writer-in-residence period ended up lasting nearly five years, during which time he wrote most of his 1982 book On the Black Hill and “failed, ever once, to make a cup of tea”.

She went on to care for Chatwin through his illness with Aids until his death in 1989. Then there was the famously spiky, alcoholic novelist Jean Rhys, to whom Diana acted as concierge, cook and companion, and the bon vivant, writer and artist Teddy Millington-Drake. With Francis Wyndham, Diana co-edited Jean Rhys: Letters 1931-1966 (1984).

When Take a Girl Like Me was published, it received some good reviews, but also some disapproving comment of the “promiscuous, hedonistic and self-indulgent” kind. Diana’s life clearly did lean towards the libertine and sometimes happily so, but the fun was not always harmless.

It led to difficulties in her relationship with her children and she herself also suffered greatly at times from low self-esteem and depression. There were two fumbling attempts at taking her own life and two nervous breakdowns requiring hospitalisation, one following the death from a drugs overdose of her eldest child, Patrick. Her daughter, Candy, from her second marriage, to John Moynihan, a sports journalist, also predeceased her.

She wrote that she found wearing the invisible cloak that envelops most women over the age of about 50 comforting and she sailed through the often choppy waters of middle-age quite contentedly, spending much of her time raising Candy’s daughter, Kezzie, sorting out George and listening to Radio 4.

After George’s death in 2007, she swapped Radio 4 for Radio 3 and at last, with nobody to please but herself, she developed a late-life love of physics, algebra and the Greek philosophers, and a tremendous passion for opera, which took her at the age of 84 across the Atlantic, economy class, to see two performances in three days at the New York Met.

She is survived by her son Tom, and by Kezzie.

Diana Margaret Campion Melly, writer, born 26 July 1937; died 2 February 2025