Real life drama with the Slaters

Although no one likes to use the word, there is a definite air of crisis at the BBC's studios in Elstree these days. Elaine Lordan, the 37-year-old actress who plays Lynne Hobbs, has just been sacked after a string of disciplinary problems, all of them involving alcohol.

Her co-star Jessie Wallace - recently voted the most popular woman on television - fears the same fate awaits her. 'She has been in tears begging to keep her job,' said a source at Elstree. It is extraordinary that actresses who play sisters and who were cast at the same time should, apparently, fall apart simultaneously.

And the two women have a great deal in common. Both were complete unknowns with virtually no television experience when they were cast in the soap in spring 2000. Elaine had been unemployed for around eight years and Jessie had failed to win a single television role since setting her heart on being an actress five years previously.

The casting, then, was more than a big break for Jessie and Elaine - it completely changed their lives. Since then, both have been feted, winning awards and carrying home hefty salaries - Elaine was paid £80,000 a year and Jessie, who plays Kat Slater, takes home £200,000 a year, making her one of the bestpaid actresses on television.

Each has bought a sporty new car: a Mercedes for Jessie and an Audi for Elaine, and both have been free to develop passions for designer clothes and shoes which, as 'resting' actresses, they had never previously been able to indulge.

But there are also less salubrious parallels between the two. Both women - who share a fondness for vodka cocktails - have been suspended from the soap for disciplinary offences, Elaine for three months and Jessie for two, during their relatively short careers at EastEnders.

Both have been convicted of drink-driving since joining the show, and both have run off with attached men - whose partners have complained shrilly in print about the homewrecking actresses.

More than this, Elaine and Jessie have over the past three years engaged in a litany of coarse, yobbish, even disgraceful behaviour at showbusiness parties - exactly the kind of behaviour one would expect from their fictitious alter-egos.

Jessie has been heard hurling foul-mouthed abuse at fellow cast members and was earlier this month to be found in the toilets of a gay nightclub commenting on the private parts of fellow revellers.

She was forced to explain herself after reports of that boozy night out reached East-Enders bosses - and tearfully pleaded to keep her job, saying that her behaviour was not nearly as bad as it had been painted.

Elaine, meanwhile, was banned from a local hotel after propositioning a divorced plasterer from Wigan by leaping onto the bonnet of his car and making frank sexual suggestions.

There has been plenty of other trouble of this sort, too: raucous behaviour in nightclubs, drunken incidents on planes and at photoshoots. No wonder the rest of the cast of EastEnders have been gripped by the burgeoning 'Slater situation' - and no wonder many of them are hoping it will end with the entire family leaving the show for good.

A huge amount of jealousy was generated when the Slaters arrived in Albert Square and were promptly put at the centre of big storylines.

Some of the cast, from the most established to the newest, disliked them for it, and have been happy to watch their downfall over recent months. 'There are those who have had it in for the Slaters from the start,' confirmed an Elstree source.

Indeed, Jessie has almost come to blows with co- stars Hannah Waterman (who plays Laura Beale) and Lucy Benjamin (Lisa Fowler) during boozy arguments - of which more later.

And according to well-placed sources on set, the surprising truth is that all of these household names are barely on speaking terms and avoid each other socially.

At first the Slater family - Charlie (Derek Martin), Mo (Laila Morse), Lynne, Kat, Little Mo (Kacey Ainsworth) and Zoe (Michelle Ryan) - had each other to be friends with.

They were all cast as the result of the same workshop audition in spring 2000 and, naturally enough, they started socialising together, too. Actor Jack Ryder, who left his role as Jamie Mitchell last Christmas, said of the clique which developed: 'I never really spoke to Jessie Wallace or any of the other Slaters. They were a nightmare between scenes, gossiping all the time. They seem to think that they are better than the other cast members.'

But that is no longer the case. Elaine and Jessie fell out almost two months ago, and for a time would not even be in the same room. Jessie, it emerges, had accused Elaine of being drunk on set and Elaine responded by bawling: 'What's it to you, you fat cow?'

'Elaine and Jessie are friends again now, things are fine between them, but they have had their moments,' said a source.

Meanwhile Michelle Ryan, who had a breakdown after splitting from her boyfriend, Footballers Wives actor Gary Lucy, keeps to herself more and Kacey Ainsworth, an actress of some repute after her ratings-winning Free Little Mo storylines, is now pregnant and has distanced herself from Elaine, Jessie and Laila Morse.

So what is the matter with the Slater girls? And why has this particular piece of casting been such a disaster for the soap, which had been seeking to boost the drama on - not off - the screen?

The answer, it seems, lies in what the actresses were like before, and why they were picked in the first place.

A senior BBC source told the Mail that the previous executive producer, John Yorke, had taken a deliberate gamble when casting the family. He said: 'EastEnders deliberately looked for larger-than-life actors who would bring a lot of themselves to the characters they played.

'They were cast because they were a bit "out there", so you can't be too surprised when this sort of thing happens.'

He added: 'If you want a wonderful acting performance, ask Meryl Streep or Sarah Lancashire. Elaine and Jessie were inexperienced actresses chosen because they were very similar to their on-screen characters.'

Laila Morse is another classic example of such casting. Ms Morse, 58, entered the acting profession only five years ago, having previously run a cafe in New Cross, South London and worked as a taxi driver. No one, though, could doubt her talent and, incidentally, she is Gary Oldman's sister.

But one wonders if the success of the show has gone to her head. Earlier this month she was photographed lying on the floor of a hotel, apparently out cold after six hours of drinking at a charity event.

The daughter of a brickie from North London, Elaine Lordan has apparently been equally unable to resist taking her fill of the high life when it finally came her way. She trained with after-school lessons at the Anna Scher theatre school which cost 25p each. She landed a starring role in Tucker's Luck aged 15 - but then had very little work until she was called to be in EastEnders, aged 34.

She had small parts in The Bill, Dangerfield and Prime Suspect, but even those chances disappeared as she got older. 'You're having a laugh asking if I had resting periods,' she said in an interview. 'I had plenty - because of my Cockney accent.

'You can't be a doctor, a lawyer, or a grown-up with a mortgage if you've a Cockney accent, you're either a thief or a prostitute. And after turning 25 there were no roles about. I had to teach aerobics to earn some money. It was so depressing to be on a school leaver's wage. I often thought about quitting acting.'

Less than a year after joining the show, her 11-year relationship with actor Gerard Rooney foundered, and by the end of that year she was setting up home with married BBC studio resources manager Peter Manuel, who left his wife Jane and three children to be with her.

That romance came out into the open in the summer of 2001 when she was breathalysed and found to be over the limit, having driven out to see Manuel when he had an accident.

She told the court she had consumed four vodka and sodas in the bar at Elstree, and a fifth in her dressing room while studying scripts. She was disqualified and fined for the offence - and EastEnders bosses became concerned about her lifestyle, which included long sessions in the studio bar at the end of a day's filming.

There was also an incident aboard a plane in October that year, when she yelled to passengers: 'We're going to be hijacked.' She was warned about her behaviour and suspended without pay so she could sort out her 'personal problems', but it didn't seem to make any difference.

This year, she had a run-in with a cameraman on the soap who she felt was too close to her. 'If you get any nearer with that thing you will be filming up my ****,' she snarled. Jessie - and others - suspected that she was drinking during the day, too.

An EastEnders source said that her behaviour had simply not improved, despite warnings, and hinted that Elaine had a drink problem which she had not been able to conquer.

'She has been sacked from the programme because of her behaviour. We have offered her a lot of help in the past and there is only so much you can do for a person. We tried time after time, until we realised we could no longer help her.'

Jessie Wallace, meanwhile, has been in more trouble off- screen than Elaine, but is at present being saved by her positive approach to her work.

'She is very professional and turns up on time and knows her lines,' the source said. 'She has been very concerned by reports that she was drunk and was going to be sacked, but at the moment her job is safe.'

However, it is true that she was sent home from the filming of a special episode, the EastEnders Christmas Party, at the end of November. It has been said that she was too drunk to work - at 9am. In fact, says a friend of Jessie's, she was merely hung-over.

'It isn't true to say that she turned up for work drunk at the end of November. She was actually terribly hungover, so bad that she was sent home. I think everyone has turned up for work hungover some time. That was blown out of proportion,' the friend said.

EastEnders bosses are, it seems, willing to turn a blind eye to her sometimes heavy drinking, and her talent for getting into trouble, because she has proved to be arguably the most popular and powerful character on the soap. They have largely accepted her protestations of innocence.

But she has not been able to explain some things away. At this year's National Television Awards she had a drunken row with Lucy Benjamin which culminated in her shouting at Lucy's boyfriend Steve McFadden (who plays Phil Mitchell) in front of dozens of witnesses.

And last year she had a furious row with Hannah Waterman, whom she threatened to slap at a BBC party.

Jessie has since tried to play it down but Hannah confirmed the story, saying:

'This was a personal argument which, unfortunately, has gone on and on. The reality is that working at EastEnders is no different to any office environment.

'Although thinking about it, the EastEnders set is much more like being at school.'

Jessie, again like Elaine, has apparently reacted to the new experience of fame by embracing the drinking culture which exists at EastEnders.

Her route to acting stardom is the least conventional of all - she left school without qualifications at 15 and entered acting after taking a course in theatrical make-up in North London. 'I lived on stuffing on toast, although there were times when I could not even afford the bread,' she revealed in an interview.

But those days are a distant memory. Jessie, who used to make ends meet by working behind the bar of her local pub, now lives in a £500,000 house in Wanstead, East London with Dave Morgan, the handsome policeman assigned to protect her during her drink- drive court case.

She has bought him a Porsche and the couple, who began dating in the spring, are engaged and contemplating a holiday in LA.

Her previous life (a twoyear romance with a man who stood trial for armed robbery and had a conviction for fraud) is something she will not talk about.

Nor will Jessie comment about the revelation early in her career that she met a drug dealer in the car park of the Royal Oak pub in Loughton, Essex.

She was given a series of talkings-to in her first year at EastEnders, and was also sent on a media training course to help her deal with the negative publicity that is the price of life in the public eye. The BBC strategy is to position her as the new grande dame of the soap - they believe she has now fully grasped how important it is that she stays out of trouble.

A source close to the show's executive producer, Louise Berridge, said: 'Jessie is subject to a feeding frenzy from the Press and we believe that everything that she does is being blown out of proportion. She doesn't need to do much wrong before she has very bad stories written about her.

'Her job is safe - at the moment.'