A true television legend has taken his final bow, and fans across the world are in tears… See more

Long before Derek Martin became Charlie Slater, he lived the kind of life most actors only pretend to endure. As a young meat porter, he learned toughness the hard way, before swapping the cold slabs of the market for the colder odds of professional gambling. When that world threatened to swallow him, he reinvented himself again, throwing his body into stunt work so others could look heroic.

It should have ended there, as an uncredited bruiser in the background. Instead, television found his face, his weighty silences, his instinctive warmth. As Charlie Slater in EastEnders, he became the nation’s stand‑in dad: flawed, stubborn, fiercely protective. For five decades on screen, he carried working‑class Britain in his voice and his eyes. Now, as the industry says goodbye, what remains is simple and rare: a man who turned every second chance into someone else’s comfort.