Affairs! Faked deaths! Sisters who are really mothers! EastEnders' best bits as soap turns 40

Disastrous weddings, pub brawls, love-rat scandals, serial killer neighbours and the absolute impossibility of ever having a quiet Christmas. Life in soapland is not for the fainthearted. For 40 years, viewers have watched EastEnders for exactly this kind of drama. Now, the BBC show is celebrating its milestone birthday with an "unmissable" week of episodes - including a live special and the chance for some audience participation.

Ross Kemp is returning as Grant Mitchell, we'll see Walford legend Natalie Cassidy's final scenes as Sonia, and the identity of Cindy's Christmas Day attacker will be revealed. See? Nothing good ever comes of spending Christmas at home in soapland. (And for anyone who thought Cindy died in prison in 1998, she came back from the dead in 2023 after actually spending time in witness protection. Keep up!).

In an Albert Square first, viewers this week will get the chance to vote on whether Denise Fox (played by Diane Parish) should reunite with her estranged husband Jack Branning (Scott Maslen), or pick her secret lover Ravi Gulati (Aaron Thiara). These latest shenanigans follow four decades of TV that has hooked viewers since the very first episode aired on 19 February 1985. So let's take a look at some of the show's most shocking, explosive and poignant moments, as we raise a glass, Queen Vic style, to EastEnders at 40.

Cue the doofs... Dirty Den's divorce papers. You can't talk about EastEnders' biggest moments without mentioning Christmas 1986, when 30 million people tuned in to see the womanising Dirty Den serving wife Angie with divorce papers, after discovering she had been faking a terminal illness. "Happy Christmas, Ange...". Brutal. It remains the highest viewed soap episode in British history. Den was later shot and killed, or seemingly killed, by a man hiding in some daffodils, before returning from the dead. Only to be killed again.

Mark's HIV. During the height of the HIV epidemic in the 1990s, Mark Fowler became the first mainstream British TV character to be diagnosed with HIV. EastEnders producers worked with the Terrence Higgins Trust charity to ensure his diagnosis and illness was portrayed accurately on screen. The groundbreaking storyline was viewed by millions, helping to change attitudes about the virus when fear and misinformation was rife, the charity said. After leaving Walford in 2003, his family was informed of Mark's death the following year.

Sharongate. People in soapland really need to learn not to spill all their darkest secrets when there are recording devices lying around. In 1994, the story of Sharon's affair with Phil Mitchell, brother of her husband Grant, came out when Grant found her accidentally recorded confession - and subsequently played it to everyone in the Queen Vic, before beating Phil to a pulp. And it wasn't even Christmas!.

Tiffany's death. Poor Tiffany. Did she not know marrying a Mitchell brother was never going to end well? On New Year's Eve (like Christmas, a dangerous time) 1998, Tiffany was planning to leave with daughter Courtney while Grant was locked up on charges of attempting to murder her. However, he got out. "Bail. Ever heard of it?" As Big Ben bonged, Grant left the Vic with Courtney, with Tiffany begging as she followed him. During a struggle, she was knocked over into the snow... and then Frank Butcher turned the corner in his car. RIP Tiff.

Ian marries Mel... but not for long. No one really believed it when glamorous Mel got together with odious Ian Beale. The victim of an unsuccessful attempt by his first wife Cindy to kill him via hitman, Ian was probably Walford's most pathetic man. But Mel thought his daughter, Lucy, had cancer, so didn't have the heart to walk away. It wasn't long before she discovered Ian had been lying, as he feared (quite rightly, to be fair) she didn't love him. Following their New Year's Eve wedding ahead of the new millennium, the fireworks popped and Big Ben bonged (again) as Mel walked out.

Pat, Peggy and Frank. One of EastEnders' most famous love triangles, the tangled love lives of Pat, Peggy and Frank carried storylines for several years. In the early 1990s, Frank and Pat were married - until he fled Walford after inadvertently causing the death of a homeless man killed in a fire at his car lot, started by Phil so Frank could claim on the insurance. Pat moved on with the more stable Roy Evans, while Frank found love with Peggy Mitchell.

But! Frank and Pat couldn't hide their true feelings, and later started an affair - leading to one of the soap's most memorable scenes when Frank showed up on Pat's doorstep, naked except for a spinning bow tie and a grin. Frank later went on to fake his own death, while Pat also had an affair with Patrick Trueman - which occasionally involved pineapple rings and whipped cream, she revealed in one episode.