Joe Macer is a fictional character from the BBC soap opera EastEnders, played by Ray Brooks.

She turns Joe down, but he does not give up, and asks her again in February 2006, after falsely telling her that he will leave for Dubai; this time, she accepts.

Joe responds in kind by calling her "a block of ice in bed," and then smashes her family photographs, insulting in turn her late husband Arthur ("a criminal"), her dead son Mark ("diseased") and her daughter Michelle ("little scrubber").

He promises Martin he will return for Pauline's second funeral, but he later claims that his car broke down on the motorway, so was unable to attend.

He left the house after the incident, at which point Pauline was fine, and that was the last time he saw his wife, who later died due to a brain haemorrhage caused by the blow to the head Joe had given her.

The characters were shown to meet at salsa classes, a relationship was quickly developed and despite Pauline's initial trepidation, 2006 saw her marrying Joe after almost a decade since the death of her first husband, Arthur Fowler (Bill Treacher).

[1] Richard was openly opposed to her character remarrying, but she was eventually convinced by the executive producer and battled—successfully—for Pauline to keep her surname, Fowler.

She rejected producers' views that Pauline and Joe "looked good together", and felt that she and Brooks had to work very hard to turn them into a "realistic-looking couple.

Their relationship steadily deteriorated throughout the year, and in episodes that aired in December 2006 Pauline ended the marriage, removing her wedding ring and informing Joe that he "was half the man that Arthur had been, that she had never really loved him and that their sex life was a sham."

Pauline was killed off in a "shocking" and dramatic storyline, which saw her collapsing and dying in the middle of Albert Square, leaving both characters and viewers in uncertainty about the cause of her demise.

[6] However, Sonia's arrest proved to be a red herring, and it was later revealed that the killer blow had actually come from Pauline's husband Joe, who broke down and confessed to Dot Branning (June Brown) that he had rowed with Pauline on Christmas Day (off-screen) and, in a fury, struck her across the head with a frying pan, causing a brain haemorrhage that claimed her life.