Saeed Jeffery

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Saeed Jeffery is a fictional character from the

BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board exam. ...

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soap opera A soap opera, or ''soap'' for short, is a typically long-running radio or television serial, frequently characterized by melodrama, ensemble casts, and sentimentality. The term "soap opera" originated from radio dramas originally being sponsored ...

'' EastEnders'', played by Andrew Johnson from 19 February to 26 December 1985. Saeed is the original owner of the First til Last grocery store. He is never truly accepted in Walford, and his arranged marriage ends in divorce after it is discovered that he has been making obscene phone calls to women. He leaves Walford in disgrace, leaving his business to his wife.

Storylines

London London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...

-born Saeed claims to be a

Cockney Cockney is an accent and dialect of English, mainly spoken in London and its environs, particularly by working-class and lower middle-class Londoners. The term "Cockney" has traditionally been used to describe a person from the East End, or ...

but is looked upon as

Asian Asian may refer to: * Items from or related to the continent of Asia: ** Asian people, people in or descending from Asia ** Asian culture, the culture of the people from Asia ** Asian cuisine, food based on the style of food of the people from Asi ...

by everyone in

Walford Walford is a fictional borough of east London in the BBC soap opera ''EastEnders''. It is the primary setting for the soap. ''EastEnders'' is filmed at Borehamwood in Hertfordshire, towards the north-west of London. Much of the location work ...

. Inexperienced and naive, he took over the family business (the corner shop at 71 Bridge Street) when his parents retired to their native

Bangladesh Bangladesh (}, ), officially the People's Republic of Bangladesh, is a country in South Asia. It is the eighth-most populous country in the world, with a population exceeding 165 million people in an area of . Bangladesh is among the mos ...

. Although his father was well liked in the community, Saeed is seen as an outsider, particularly by

Lou Beale Lou Beale is a fictional character from the BBC soap opera ''EastEnders'', played by Anna Wing. Her first appearance is in the first episode, which was broadcast on 19 February 1985, and her last is in episode 362, first shown on 26 July 1988, ...

(

Anna Wing Anna Eva Lydia Catherine Wing (30 October 1914 – 7 July 2013) was an English actress who had a long career in television and theatre, known for portraying the role of Beale family matriarch Lou Beale in the BBC soap opera ''EastEnders''. ...

), who regularly comments that he doesn't belong or know how to take care of his customers. Saeed is unhappy in his arranged marriage to his unwilling wife,

Naima "Naima" ( ) is a jazz ballad composed by John Coltrane in 1959 that he named after his then-wife, Juanita Naima Grubbs. Coltrane first recorded it for his 1959 album '' Giant Steps'', and it became one of his first well-known works. History Co ...

(

Shreela Ghosh Shreela Ghosh (born 25 September 1962) is a former dancer, actress and reporter, became publicly known in the United Kingdom when she was cast as Naima Jeffery in 1985, one of the original characters in the BBC soap opera, '' EastEnders''. She h ...

), who shares a flat with him at 47B

Albert Square Walford is a fictional borough of east London in the BBC soap opera '' EastEnders''. It is the primary setting for the soap. ''EastEnders'' is filmed at Borehamwood in Hertfordshire, towards the north-west of London. Much of the location ...

. Naima doesn't like Saeed much and spends most of her time trying to undermine him; rebelling against the customs that her parents forced her to live by. Naima refuses to share her husband's bed and Saeed starts visiting prostitutes and later the strip-club where Mary Smith (

Linda Davidson Linda Davidson (born 18 June 1964 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada) is a Canadian- British former actress and writer. She played the wayward punk Mary Smith in the BBC soap opera, ''EastEnders''. Mary was one of the serial's original characters; Dav ...

) works. After continual pressure, Naima relents and finally consummates her marriage to Saeed, improving things between the couple, but their marital bliss is short-lived. Naima receives an anonymous letter from

Dot Cotton Dorothy "Dot" Branning (also Cotton) is a fictional character from the BBC soap opera, ''EastEnders'', played by June Brown. In a special episode entitled ''EastEnders: Dot's Story'' (2003) a young Dot was played by Tallulah Pitt-Brown in fl ...

(

June Brown June Muriel Brown (16 February 1927 – 3 April 2022) was an English actress and author. She was best known for her role as Dot Cotton on the BBC soap opera ''EastEnders'' (1985–1993; 1997–2020). In 2005, she won Best Actress at the '' ...

), who has discovered Saeed's sordid exploits. Dot feels it is her Christian duty to inform Saeed's wife, and when Naima confronts Saeed, he does not deny it so she leaves him. A few months later, Saeed is discovered making secret obscene phone calls to Naima's friend,

Debbie Wilkins Debbie "Debs" Wilkins is a fictional character from the BBC soap opera ''EastEnders'', played by Shirley Cheriton, from 21 March 1985 to 14 May 1987. Debbie is Walford's first upwardly mobile character. She has an on/off relationship with her i ...

(

Shirley Cheriton Shirley Cheriton (born 28 June 1955) is an English actress and performer, best known for her roles as Debbie Wilkins in the BBC soap opera ''EastEnders'' and her portrayal of Miss Prescott in the ''Are You Being Served?'' follow up, ''Grace & Fa ...

). When Naima learns of this, she files for divorce. Feeling humiliated and alone, Saeed takes his parents' advice and moves to Bangladesh, where he allegedly remarries and lives happily with his new wife and their seven children. It is also mentioned that Saeed works as a translator for the government in

Dhaka Dhaka ( or ; bn, ঢাকা, Ḍhākā, ), formerly known as Dacca, is the capital and largest city of Bangladesh, as well as the world's largest Bengali-speaking city. It is the eighth largest and sixth most densely populated city i ...

. His last appearance is on 26 December 1985 where his final scene is an emotional farewell with Lou Beale before departing in a taxi. After Saeed's departure, Naima remains in Walford and runs the shop on her own until 1987, when she remarries and also returns to Bangladesh.

Character creation and development

Saeed Jeffery was one of the original twenty-three characters invented by the creators of ''EastEnders'',

Tony Holland Anthony John Holland (18 January 1940 – 28 November 2007) was a British screenwriter, best known as a writer and co-creator (with Julia Smith) of the BBC soap opera '' EastEnders''. Early life Holland was the oldest of three children born to ...

and Julia Smith. Saeed and his wife

were the first

characters to appear in the soap. Black and Asian characters were two ethnic minorities that had previously been under-represented in British soap before ''EastEnders'' aired. Holland and Smith knew that for the soap to succeed there needed to be a varied group of characters, so that several different sections of the audience had someone to identify with. Additionally, if the programme was to be realistic, it had to reflect the cross-section of society that actually existed in the real location. For these reasons, different sexes, ages, classes, religions and races were all included in the original character line-up. Both Holland and Smith had been at the forefront of the move towards 'integrated casting' in television and had encountered an array of ethnic diversities in the process. Even though the ethnic minority groups were deemed the hardest to research, Holland and Smith called upon their contacts to relay information about their origins and lifestyles and were then able to portray Walford's most recent immigrants more realistically. Saeed was named after one of Tony Holland's

Bengali Bengali or Bengalee, or Bengalese may refer to: *something of, from, or related to Bengal, a large region in South Asia * Bengalis, an ethnic and linguistic group of the region * Bengali language, the language they speak ** Bengali alphabet, the w ...

friends. Holland had attended Saeed's arranged marriage, and he thought the notion of an arranged marriage, particularly an unhappy one, would be an interesting and informative topic to tackle in the soap. Saeed's original character outline as written by Smith and Holland appeared in an abridged form in their book, '' EastEnders: The Inside Story'' (In this passage, Naima will be referred to as Najma). :"He is quarter English, three-quarters Bengali and she is wholly Bengali. Their parents were originally from Bangladesh, formerly East Pakistan, and they are Muslims and cousins...Najma had an easier childhood...He left school at eighteen and went to cramming college for a year...In despair, his parents sent him back to India. He had always felt an outsider in England because he's an Indian (the "paki" at school), but he didn't fit in in India either. The other Bengali children of his generation called him "Sahib"...Najma had an easier childhood. She became aware that she couldn't accept the traditional role of an Indian wife, but she wasn't enough of a rebel to leave home and adopt a totally different lifestyle...Saeed's mother's father became seriously ill. It was decided that Saeed's parents should return home to India, and a hasty marriage was arranged between Najma and Saeed so the young couple could then run the food store...They are in a confusing situation, accepting the customs of their parents, yet - because of having been born, brought up and educated in this country - feeling that they're slightly English...Neither of them is particularly docile, having lived through the jungle of the school playground, and the cut and thrust of working-class urban life...Saeed and Najma will make a big effort to mix, and most of the time, fail...Saeed might even visit the pub, and try to give the impression that he's a real cockney...but he wouldn't want to go home to a cockney wife." (page 58) Andrew Johnson auditioned for the part and had a lot in common with Saeed. Like Saeed, he'd been born of mixed races and cultures, and like Saeed, he'd found that it led to confusions as he grew up and he didn't know whether to categorise himself as Asian or English. At the interview he was heated on the subject of the "image" of Asians on television, which began to make Holland and Smith apprehensive about casting him. They feared that he may only want his race depicted in a certain way, only sympathetically or with dignity. They also worried about his physical stature. He was six feet tall, whilst

(the actress playing his wife) was only five feet three, which sparked worries over how the two could both be contained in the same shot. Despite their initial worries, it was decided that Johnson's similarities with the character would be advantageous and he was cast in the role. Saeed ran the corner shop, and his early storylines depicted the problems of his arranged marriage and portrayed a character caught between two cultures. Of the two, Saeed was the more keen partner in the marriage, but continuously found himself being pushed away by his wife. Despite being labelled as a stereotypical portrayal of Asian people today, at the time in the 80s such issues had not been widely covered, particularly on mainstream television. However, Holland and Smith's initial fears regarding Johnson's apprehension to play the character in anything but a dignified way, came to fruition. Problems arose between Johnson and the script-writers when they attempted to involve Saeed in some unsavoury storylines, such as his tendency to visit prostitutes and make obscene phone calls to a female resident on the Square. Johnson was somewhat disturbed at the prospect of his character displaying simple human weaknesses, and so the decision was made to write the character out. On-screen Saeed and Naima's marriage collapsed, they eventually split and Saeed moved to Bangladesh. He departed on Boxing Day 1985, making him the first ''EastEnders'' character to permanently leave the series (

Mark Fowler Mark Fowler is a fictional character in the BBC soap opera ''EastEnders''. Mark, an original regular character when the series started in February 1985, became a semi-regular after his original portrayer David Scarboro was written out of the ...

had departed in April that year, but would make several returns to the series, eventually returning on a permanent basis). Johnson spoke out about the "contentious storylines" his character was involved with at the time, commenting, "I felt the scripts could damage race relations. Most people know nothing about Asians. Too many think they're greasy, horrible people who take jobs that Brits should have."

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Jeffery, Saeed EastEnders characters Fictional shopkeepers Television characters introduced in 1985 Male characters in television