Saeed Jeffery

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EastEnders character

Saeed Jeffery
Portrayed by	Andrew Johnson
Duration	1985
Date of birth	Unknown
Marital status	Divorced
Occupation	Shopkeeper
Family	Naima, Ashraf

Saeed Jeffery was a fictional character in the BBC soap opera EastEnders. He was played by Andrew Johnson.

Saeed was the original owner of the first til last grocery store. He was never truly accepted in Walford, and his arranged marriage ended in divorce after it was discovered that he'd been making obscene phonecalls to women. He left Walford in disgrace, leaving his business to his wife.

1 Character creation and development
2 History
3 Family
4 References
5 External links

[edit] Character creation and development

Saeed Jeffery was one of the original twenty-three characters invented by the creators of EastEnders, Tony Holland and Julia Smith. Saeed and his wife Naima were the first Asian 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 friends. Holland had attended Saeed's arranged marriage, and he thought the notion of an arranged marriage, particularly a unhappy one, would be an interesting and informative topic to tackle in the soap.^[1]

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 his "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)^[1]

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 Shreela Ghosh (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 similiarities with the character would be advantageous and he was cast in the role.^[1]

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.^[2]

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 phonecalls 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 returned to India. Saeed became the first original character to make a permanent exit from the show (David Scarboro who played Mark Fowler had left before this, but made subsequent returns to the show). He departed in December 1985.^[1]

Below is an outline of Saeed's storylines during his time in EastEnders.

[edit] History

London born Saeed claimed to be a Cockney but was looked upon as Asian by all in Walford. Inexperienced and naive, he'd been left to run the family business (the corner shop at 71 Bridge Street) when his parents retired and moved to their native Bangladesh. Although his father had been well-liked in the community, Saeed was viewed as an outsider, particularly by Lou Beale, who regularly commented that he didn't belong or know how to take care of his customers.

Saeed was unhappy in his arranged marriage to an unwilling wife, Naima, who shared a flat with him at 47B Albert Square. Naima didn't seem to like Saeed very much and spent most of her time trying to undermine him; rebelling against the archaic customs that her people forced her to live by. The first nine months of their marriage were unconsummated with Saeed occasionally visiting prostitutes and later regularly visiting the strip-club where Mary Smith worked. His wife finally relented and it seemed that Saeed was finally going to be allowed to consummate his marriage. That was until Naima received an anonymous letter. Dot Cotton had found out about Saeed's sordid exploits and her Christian duty called on her to inform Saeed's wife of the rumours about his sexcapades. When confronted with the letter, Saeed did not deny it and Naima left him.

A few months later, Saeed was discovered making secret obscene phone calls to Naima's good friend Debbie Wilkins. When Naima discovered this, she filed for divorce. Feeling humiliated and alone, Saeed took his parents advice and left London for Bangladesh, where he allegedly remarried and now lives happily with his new wife and their seven children. Saeed currently works as a translator for the government in Dhaka. His last appearance was in December 1985.

After Saeed's departure, Naima remained in Walford and ran the shop on her own until 1987 when she re-married and also returned to Bangladesh.