Introduced on 5 July 1990, Clyde featured in prominent storylines including an inter-racial relationship with Michelle Fowler (Susan Tully) and being framed for the murder of publican Eddie Royle (Michael Melia).

Clyde resumes boxing, spurred on by Phil (Steve McFadden) and Grant Mitchell (Ross Kemp), who hope to exploit him in the ring by pitting him against a superior fighter and betting against him.

Michelle sticks by him and she and her daughter Vicki Fowler (Samantha Leigh Martin) leave Walford with Clyde, with the hope of starting a new life together in France.

He only secures release several weeks later when a witness, Joe Wallace (Jason Rush) comes forward and identifies Nick as Eddie's real killer.

Upon Clyde's release, his relationship with Michelle abruptly ends when he catches her in bed with another man, Jack Woodman (James Gilbey).

Jules disapproves, but Clyde ignores his protests, and in July 1993 he decides to leave Walford to start a new life with Gidea in Trinidad.

Ferguson had previously been a producer on ITV's The Bill – a hard-hitting, gritty and successful police drama, which seemed to be challenging EastEnders in providing a realistic vision of modern life in London.

Due to his success on The Bill, Peter Cregeen, the Head of Series at the BBC, poached Ferguson to become the executive producer of EastEnders.

[2] Ferguson altered the way the episodes were produced, changed the way the storylines were conceptualised and introduced a far greater amount of location work than had previously been seen.

[2] Among the new characters were the Jamaican Tavernier family, who collectively arrived on-screen in July 1990, composed of grandfather Jules (Tommy Eytle), his son and daughter-in-law Celestine (Leroy Golding) and Etta (Jacqui Gordon-Lawrence), their eldest son Clyde (Steven Woodcock), and their twins Lloyd (Garey Bridges) and Hattie (Michelle Gayle).

Colin Brake described the Taverniers as the major new additions that year, and it heralded the first time that an entire family had joined the serial all at once.

[3] Rupert Smith has classified Clyde as a "poster boy" the type of character whose principal purpose "seems to be to please the show's sizeable straight female and gay audience".

Brake suggested there "was a strong sense of tension as the episode built to the inevitable ending, with Michelle and Clyde arrested by the police on the verge of boarding a private boat that would have taken them to France.

Brake described it as "the most exciting thriller episodes of EastEnders" and suggested that it "allowed a new side of both Clyde and Michelle to be seen, and put real pressure on their already fragile relationship".

: popular media culture in post-war Britain, the authors have referenced Clyde and the rest of the Tavernier family as non-white characters who appeared to have been integrated into part of the predominantly white communal setting of the soap.

The ethnic minority households are accepted in the working-class community, but the black, white and Asian families remain culturally distinct."

He noted that the Taverniers, the focus of black characters in the early 1990s, for a while had the same mixture of generations and attitudes that characterized the Fowlers, one of the soap's core white families who had a dominant position in the series.