List of East Enders Characters (1985) - Saeed Jeffery

Saeed Jeffery, played by Andrew Johnson, is the original owner of the First til Last grocery store. He is never truly accepted in Walford, and his arranged marriage ends in divorce after it is discovered that he'd been making obscene phone calls to women. He leaves Walford in disgrace, leaving his business to his wife. Saeed Jeffery is one of the original twenty-three characters invented by the creators of EastEnders, Tony Holland and Julia Smith. Saeed and his wife Naima (Shreela Ghosh) are the first Asian characters to appear in the soap. 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.