Never afraid to speak her mind, and woe betide anyone who manages to get on her wrong side, Lou has the respect of her friends and family, even if they do find her a bit of a nuisance at times.

She was born into a large working-class East End family, the youngest of seven siblings, and grew up with a strong sense of community spirit.

In the 1930s, she fell in love with a local boy, Albert Beale (Gary Olson), and gave birth to his daughter, Maggie (Olivia Shanley), but placed her for adoption because she was born out of wedlock.

They had six more children: Harry (Aaron Mason), Ronnie (Chase Marks), Dora, Kenny (Michael Attwell), and twins Pete (Peter Dean) and Pauline (Wendy Richard).

Lou then watched her grandchildren Michelle (Susan Tully), Mark (David Scarboro/Todd Carty) and Ian Beale (Adam Woodyatt) grow up, with Pauline, Pete, Arthur and Kathy looking after her in her old age.

Lou's affinity and ties with the area mean that she tends to view Albert Square as her own and thinks that gives her an excuse to intrude into people's business as she sees fit.

In February 1985, she is furious to discover that Pauline is pregnant for the third time, her family already financially crippled by Arthur's long stint of unemployment.

Before his return to New Zealand, Lou manages to make amends with her estranged son, despite Pat's malicious stirring – who later admits to Simon that Brian Wicks (Leslie Schofield) is his real father after all.

Fearing she is dying, she takes the opportunity to announce to her nearest and dearest exactly what she thinks of them, even managing to make a truce of sorts with nemesis Pat.

The creators of EastEnders, Tony Holland and Julia Smith, had always intended the programme to be primarily based around a large family "in old East-end tradition".

[4] Lou's original character outline as written by series creators Julia Smith and Tony Holland appeared in an abridged form in their book, EastEnders: The Inside Story:"A lively 70 year old.

She was so keen to play the part that she turned up for the audition clutching her birth certificate to prove she was a Hackney greengrocer's daughter and implored the producers to give her the job.

[2] An early choice in the casting process, Wing had the face, voice and attitude that Tony Holland had imagined for the character.

[2] Most of her storylines were family based, which included various feuds, most notably with Pat Wicks (Pam St. Clement), the ex-wife of her son who showed up in Walford in 1986.

She felt EastEnders did not fit in with her beliefs as a Quaker, commenting "We had 31 million viewers and it was shown all over the world, and I suddenly thought 'Should I be in this?

Lou spent her final day arranging her affairs, seeing various members of her family, passing on advice and giving them presents and at the end of the episode she announced: "That's you lot sorted.

The episode was also notable for featuring, for the first time, a train crossing the railway viaduct in Bridge Street[10] — a special-effects shot commissioned especially for the occasion.

In the show's earliest episodes, Pauline Fowler (Wendy Richard) and Pete Beale (Peter Dean) are the only two of Lou's offspring to feature on screen.

Through character dialogue in episodes first shown in July 1985, the audience are told of the existence of four other children: Keith, Paul, Norma and Shirley — who were said to be living in Billericay, Romford and Eastbourne.

In addition, the character of Lou Beale also features heavily within a series of spin-off EastEnders novels by Hugh Miller, set prior to 1985 and published in 1986.

Within the novelisations readers are introduced to further characters from Lou's history: sons Harry and Ronnie, a daughter Dora and siblings Elsie, Liz, Queenie and Terence.

In 1997, another of Lou's children is introduced: Maggie Flaherty (Olivia Shanley), her eldest child, who was placed for adoption as she was born out of wedlock.

[14] Ian Hyland from Daily Mirror wrote that he was surprised that Lou had only appeared for three years as he assumed that she had been on the soap for longer due to being "such a legend".

[15] Hyland also wrote that Lou "ran Albert Square" and told readers that they could not "mess with her", as well as commenting on how "hapless grandson Ian could do with having her around to fight his corner these days" and that she would have not allowed him to end up "on the street".

[15] In 2020, Sara Wallis and Ian Hyland from The Daily Mirror placed Lou 50th on their ranked list of the Best EastEnders characters of all time, calling her "stubborn" and "Queen of the withering put-down".