The actor Derek Martin, who has died after a short illness aged 92, played Charlie, the level-headed patriarch of the Slater family, in the BBC TV soap opera EastEnders for more than a decade. Charlie, a widowed cabbie, arrived in the fictional Albert Square in 2000 with four of his five daughters, Lynne, Kat, Little Mo (Maureen) and Zoe, and his mother-in-law, Mo Harris.
The role was in sharp contrast to the tough guys played by Martin earlier in his television career. But the usually mild-mannered Charlie’s devotion to his daughters could lead him to explode in anger, as he did on discovering that Kat (played by Jessie Wallace) was Zoe’s biological mother, having become pregnant after being raped by her uncle, Charlie’s brother Harry (Michael Elphick), when she was 13 – a secret known only by Kat and her late mother, Viv. When Charlie found out, he headed straight to the Queen Vic pub and attacked Harry, with locals having to restrain him. He also twice snapped in defence of Little Mo (Kacey Ainsworth), and this led to a three-month prison sentence for Charlie.
