Tony Carpenter is a fictional character from the BBC soap opera EastEnders, played by Oscar James, from 28 February 1985 until 28 May 1987.

After Nick taunts Kelvin about the colour of his skin, Tony teaches him a lesson, which at least manages to scare him out of spreading his racial hatred for a while.

The affair is conducted in secret, but after Angie initiates a kiss in The Queen Vic with Tony, she is caught by her adoptive daughter, Sharon Watts (Letitia Dean).

Later, Hannah arrives at Tony's house with the disturbing news that her new lover, Neville Agard (Gordon Case), had been beating both her and their daughter Cassie.

Things reach a climax when Tony hits Mehmet Osman (Haluk Bilginer) the following year for making a pass at Hannah.

Tony spends the rest of the year doing odd-jobs and driving a car for Ali Osman's (Nejdet Salih) cab firm.

Tony tires of life in Walford and a few months later he departs Albert Square for Trinidad, leaving Kelvin in charge of his property.

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.

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.

However, shortly before he left the series in 1987, he controversially criticised EastEnders and the BBC for not promoting their black or other ethnic minority characters: The powers that be do not think I am interesting enough.