Getting your questions ready
Getting your questions ready
Beat the crowd
10 questions No timer
50 free EastEnders trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
EastEnders launched on 19 February 1985 with a body in a flat and Den Watts saying "Stinks in here dunnit?" Forty years on it has given British TV its most-watched soap episode ever, its first same-sex kiss, a fictional tube station and a postcode, E20, that did not exist until the show invented it. This EastEnders quiz covers the creation of Walford, the Watts, Beales, Fowlers, Mitchells and Slaters, the whodunits from Who Shot Phil? to Who Killed Lucy Beale?, and the actors behind the Square's longest-serving faces. Every answer is sourced and explained.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01On which BBC channel has EastEnders been broadcast since 1985?
BBC One
The show was commissioned to give the BBC a twice-weekly rival to ITV's Coronation Street. Within eight months it topped the BARB ratings.
Q 02Who created EastEnders with Tony Holland?
Julia Smith
Smith and Holland had worked together on Z-Cars and the hospital drama Angels. Phil Redmond created Brookside; Tony Warren created Coronation Street.
Q 03On what date did the first episode of EastEnders air?
19 February 1985
It went out at 7pm on a Tuesday and drew around 17 million viewers. The launch had slipped from January because of delays to Wogan's chat show.
Q 04Whose death opened the very first episode of EastEnders?
Reg Cox
The creators decided none of their 23 characters was wicked enough to have killed him, so a 24th, Nick Cotton, was invented to do it.
Q 05Which character was the 24th created, specifically so someone was wicked enough to kill Reg Cox?
Nick Cotton
Played by John Altman, Nick became famous for constant exits and returns, tormenting his mother Dot until the character died in 2015.
Q 06What is the fictional postcode of Walford?
E20
The show's working title was East 8, after Hackney's real postcode, but casting agents kept mishearing it as 'Estate', so a made-up code was created. E20 later became real for the Olympic Park.
Q 07The producers modelled their Victorian set on which real place in Dalston?
Fassett Square
The creators found the area had changed too much to film in for real, so the square was rebuilt at BBC Elstree in Hertfordshire, outdoors and open to the weather.
Q 08Where has EastEnders been filmed since it began?
BBC Elstree Centre
The outdoor set was rebuilt from 2014 using mostly real brick. Den's plunge into the canal, though, had to be shot in a water tank at Ealing because the Grand Union was deemed unsafe.
Q 09Who composed the EastEnders theme tune?
Simon May
Alan Jeapes made the famous aerial title image from about 800 photographs taken at 1,000 feet. Eric Spear wrote Coronation Street's theme and Tony Hatch wrote Neighbours'.
Q 10The title sequence was updated to add which London landmark after it was built?
Millennium Dome
The Dome sits on the Greenwich peninsula, in the bend of the Thames that dominates the aerial shot. The credits have been re-photographed several times since.
Q 11Roughly how many viewers watched the first episode of EastEnders in 1985?
17 million
Tabloids were soon running EastEnders 'exclusives' daily. By Christmas 1986 the audience for a single episode would almost double that figure.
Q 12What did Den Watts hand Angie in the record-breaking 25 December 1986 episode?
Divorce papers
Angie had lied that she had six months to live. Across the original broadcast and omnibus, 30.15 million people watched, still the highest UK soap audience ever.
Q 13Who played Angie Watts from the first episode until 1988?
Anita Dobson
Q 21Teenage Michelle Fowler's 1985 pregnancy was revealed to be by which older man?
Den Watts
The baby was Vicki Fowler, making her the half-sister of Den's adopted daughter and Michelle's best friend, Sharon.
Q 22In which year was Phil Mitchell introduced to EastEnders?
1990
He arrived on 20 February, followed by brother Grant, sister Sam and mother Peggy. The Mitchells dominated the soap for the rest of the decade.
Q 23Who was revealed as the culprit in the 2001 'Who Shot Phil?' whodunit?
Lisa Shaw
Phil's ex-girlfriend and the mother of his daughter Louise pulled the trigger. 19.8 million watched the reveal, even though a BBC employee had leaked it by email.
Julia Smith had taught her years earlier and remembered her as 'sharp, brittle, very theatrical'. Dobson later married Queen guitarist Brian May.
Q 14In 1989, Den Watts was shot by a gunman hiding his weapon in what?
A bunch of daffodils
Den fell into the canal and was presumed dead for 14 years. The splash itself was filmed in a tank at Ealing Studios.
Q 15In which year did Den Watts return from the dead, having secretly fled to Spain?
2003
Leslie Grantham's return episode aired on 29 September. He only meant to stay 18 months so Den's second death could land on the 20th anniversary.
Q 16Who finally killed Den for good in the 20th anniversary episode in 2005?
Chrissie Watts
His wife bludgeoned him in the Queen Vic and he was buried under its cellar floor. 14.34 million watched the episode on 18 February 2005.
Q 17What was the very first line spoken in EastEnders, by Den Watts?
"Stinks in here dunnit?"
He said it just before discovering Reg Cox's body. Den was one of three Watts characters originally named Jack, Pearl and Tracey before the rename.
Q 18Which actor who played Den Watts had served ten years in prison for murder before joining the show?
Leslie Grantham
He had shot a taxi driver in Osnabrück while serving in the army in 1966. The story broke three days after the show launched; producers already knew.
Q 19Sharon first appeared in 1985 as the adopted child of which Queen Vic landlords?
Den and Angie
Letitia Dean's early contract famously forbade her from losing weight. Her 1994 affair with brother-in-law Phil became known as Sharongate.
Q 20In the 1994 'Sharongate' storyline, Sharon married Grant Mitchell but had an affair with whom?
Phil
Grant learned the truth from a taped confession played at a party. Writer Tony Jordan says it is the storyline he is proudest of.
Q 24Which actor has played Phil Mitchell since 1990?
Steve McFadden
Born in Maida Vale in 1959, McFadden studied at RADA. Shane Richie plays Alfie Moon, Jake Wood Max Branning and Sid Owen Ricky Butcher.
Q 25Before Barbara Windsor took over in 1994, who first played Peggy Mitchell in 1991?
Jo Warne
Warne appeared in just ten episodes. Windsor, who was 'as different as it's possible to get' physically, went on to play Peggy for more than two decades.
Q 26Barbara Windsor was best known before EastEnders for which British film series?
Carry On
She made nine of them between 1964 and 1974, including Carry On Camping. She was made a Dame in 2016, the year she left the Square.
Q 27Which actor played Grant Mitchell?
Ross Kemp
Kemp later became a BAFTA-winning documentary maker. Fairbrass played Dan Sullivan, Kazinsky Sean Slater and Harman Dennis Rickman.
Q 28Danniella Westbrook is best known for playing which Mitchell?
Sam
She was 16 when cast as Phil and Grant's younger sister. Kim Medcalf took over the role during Westbrook's well-publicised addiction years.
Q 29Dot Cotton spent most of her Walford years working where?
The launderette
She shared the job with Pauline Fowler and mispronounced her boss Mr Papadopolous for years. Bupa once rated chain-smoking Dot television's unhealthiest character.
Q 30In 2008 Dot became the first British soap character to do what?
Carry a whole monologue episode
The episode, 'Pretty Baby....', was a single half-hour of June Brown recording a message for her hospitalised husband Jim. It earned her a BAFTA nomination.