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The actor Derek Martin, who has died after a short illness aged 92, played Charlie, the level-headed patriarch of the Slater family, in the BBC TV soap opera EastEnders for more than a decade. Charlie, a widowed cabbie, arrived in the fictional Albert Square in 2000 with four of his five daughters, Lynne, Kat, Little Mo (Maureen) and Zoe, and his mother-in-law, Mo Harris.
The role was in sharp contrast to the tough guys played by Martin earlier in his television career. But the usually mild-mannered Charlie’s devotion to his daughters could lead him to explode in anger, as he did on discovering that Kat (played by Jessie Wallace) was Zoe’s biological mother, having become pregnant after being raped by her uncle, Charlie’s brother Harry (Michael Elphick), when she was 13 – a secret known only by Kat and her late mother, Viv. When Charlie found out, he headed straight to the Queen Vic pub and attacked Harry, with locals having to restrain him. He also twice snapped in defence of Little Mo (Kacey Ainsworth), and this led to a three-month prison sentence for Charlie.
Like his screen alter ego, Martin, a London East Ender, who was twice married and divorced, was known as a big softie who could just occasionally snap. “We’re both easygoing family men,” said Martin in a 2001 interview with the Sun newspaper. “But if anyone upsets me or mine I could be your worst nightmare.”
In EastEnders, Charlie went through several brief relationships – including one with Peggy Mitchell (Barbara Windsor) – and tried to be a guiding influence on his family. In 2010, Kat, by then running the Queen Vic with her husband, Alfie Moon (Shane Richie), employed him as a potman. Martin was written out the following year when Kat blamed her father for leaving her newborn son, Tommy, alone in order to go out drinking. He returned for several brief stints, ending in 2016 when Charlie suffered a fatal heart attack.
He had previously been considered by the EastEnders producers for the roles of Den Watts, which went to Leslie Grantham, and Frank Butcher, which was taken by Mike Reid after Martin committed instead to filming the drama King & Castle (1986-88).
He was born in Bow, east London, to Christina (nee Jarvis) and Bill Rapp, a docker. James Cagney and George Raft, archetypal film gangsters, were his childhood heroes, and he was never far away from violence.
On leaving school, he was an apprentice surveyor, then went through a string of jobs. During that time, he had his nose bent after being hit with a snooker cue, fended off a 20-strong gang by charging at them wielding an axe and was stabbed in the leg while working as a club bouncer. He also temporarily “looked after” guns for the Kray twins’ elder brother, Charlie.
Following national service as a corporal in the RAF police (1951-53), he joined the Port of London Authority police, then became a meat porter at Smithfield market (1954-62). Being acquitted at the Old Bailey of stealing meat changed the course of his life. “When I got away with that, I realised I could act, and turned my back on crime,” he said. Bluffing to an agent that he had experience in repertory theatre, he took Martin as his professional name and landed a job as an extra on Z Cars.
He did the same in series such as No Hiding Place (in 1965) and Softly Softly (from 1966 to 1969), often playing villains, and from 1966 also worked as a stunt performer until he broke his collarbone while filming Elizabeth R in 1971, which led him to concentrate on acting parts.
His breakthrough came with the starring role of a corrupt police officer, Detective Inspector Fred Pyall, in Law and Order (1978), GF Newman’s four-part drama questioning the British legal system. “I’ve known a few coppers and villains over the years, and the dividing line is very fine,” Martin told TV Times in 1986.
He played one of Cagney’s sidekicks when the Hollywood actor shot scenes for the 1981 film Ragtime in Britain, then co-starred on TV in The Chinese Detective (1981-82) as Detective Chief Inspector Berwick, the boss often seen reprimanding the East End officer played by David Yip for his unorthodox approach. In King & Castle, Martin starred as Ronald King, a bent ex-copper running the Manor debt-collecting agency, with Nigel Planer as his assistant, David Castle.
In the shortlived BBC Spanish-based soap Eldorado in 1993, he played Alex Morris, a golf-playing mob boss on the Costa del Sol. Then, in the prison drama The Governor (1995-96), he was Gary Marshall, deputy to Janet McTeer’s title character.
His autobiography, An East End Life: My Story, was published in 2010.
Martin married Gloria Mitchell in 1961 and Christine Rigg in 1971, and is survived by David and Jonathan, the twins from his second marriage.
