No bedroom scenes for Peggy, says Barbara Windsor

No bedroom scenes for Peggy, says Barbara Windsor
No bedroom scenes for Peggy, says Barbara Windsor (Image credit: PA Wire/PA Photos)

EastEnders star Barbara Windsor has clamped down on plans to 'sex up' her character Peggy Mitchell, according to the papers. The News Of The World reports that the soap's producers and script executives wanted to spice things up for some of Walford's older residents, and had written bedroom scenes for Peggy and her new husband Archie, played by actor Larry Lamb. However their plans have been scuppered by Windsor - who turns 72 this week - after she claimed viewers would not like the idea. "Viewers don't want to see a woman my age kissing and being intimate," Windsor said. "They only want to see young people they fancy like Stacey (Lacey Turner), God bless her - not me. So I have all that cut." Windsor - who has been in the soap for 15 years - added that EastEnders bosses keep trying to add in saucy moments - but she refuses to allow anything inappropriate onscreen between Peggy and Archie. "Larry and I saw a couple of things in the script and we looked at each other and said, 'Are you kidding? In the bedroom? No thank you!' So we had that taken out. "People know we're in our late sixties - I mean I'm not, I'm in my seventies - and they don't want to see that."

Patrick McLennan

Patrick McLennan is a London-based journalist and documentary maker who has worked as a writer, sub-editor, digital editor and TV producer in the UK and New Zealand. His CV includes spells as a news producer at the BBC and TVNZ, as well as web editor for Time Inc UK. He has produced TV news and entertainment features on personalities as diverse as Nick Cave, Tom Hardy, Clive James, Jodie Marsh and Kevin Bacon and he co-produced and directed The Ponds, which has screened in UK cinemas, BBC Four and is currently available on Netflix. 

An entertainment writer with a diverse taste in TV and film, he lists Seinfeld, The Sopranos, The Chase, The Thick of It and Detectorists among his favourite shows, but steers well clear of most sci-fi.