Ali Osman, played by Nejdet Salih, is a happy-go-lucky, easy going chap, which is in stark contrast to his highly strung wife, Sue (Sandy Ratcliff). He has a compulsive addiction to gambling, which gets him into trouble on more than one occasion and his marriage ends in disaster after he has his wife sectioned. He is a member of the original EastEnders cast, appearing in the first episode on 19 February 1985. He remains with the show for nearly five years afterwards, making his final appearance on 10 October 1989. Ali Osman was one of the original twenty-three characters invented by the creators of EastEnders, Tony Holland and Julia Smith. Ali, a Turkish Cypriot, was originally intended to be named Chris. His name was changed to Ali when it dawned on Holland that he had given a Christian name to a Muslim. Ali was a well-intentioned attempt to represent the proportion of Turkish Cypriots who had immigrated to England and settled in the East End of London. 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.
Read more about this topic: List Of East Enders Characters (1985)
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“That was always the difference between Muhammad Ali and the rest of us. He came, he saw, and if he didn’t entirely conquer—he came as close as anybody we are likely to see in the lifetime of this doomed generation.”
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