Walford East

You can’t tell me what to do. You ain’t my mother.

As soap operas go, EastEnders is the one I find the most palatable. And not just because of geography. I say that… I don’t think I’ve properly watched it for at least a decade, maybe two. Is Sid Owen still in it? I remember his musical career with great fondness. What a lad. Rickyyyyyy. The eternal millstone around Patsy Palmer’s neck. 1,233 episodes under her belt. Genuinely impressive.

Anyway, Walford. Pro tip: don’t live there. Don’t even visit there. An absolute casserole of rapes, murders, euthanasia and arson. You could probably contract Ebola just by thinking about it. As I mentioned with Neighbours, it’s practically impossible to trawl through every bit of footage from a show like this – coming up to forty years of harrowing, cliff-hanging drumbeats.

So we’re at the Tube. You probably worked that out already. According to the internets, Walford East is on the Hammersmith & City and District line and would be a direct replacement for the real life station Bromley-by-Bow. So as east as it is, at least it’s north of the river. Sorry, South Londoners. Again.

There’s an equivalent Walford West but it’s barely mentioned and apparently never even seen. Weirdly, any footage of Underground trains you’ve ever seen on EastEnders is not real. It’s all CGIed in. Who’d have thought it?