KATHY Beale is ready to open EastEnders’ first gay bar – and it will be called the Prince Albert.
The cafe owner – who is played by actress Gillian Taylforth in the BBC soap – sold the expensive stolen necklace her son Ben gave her in January and decided to buy and convert The Albert bar.
And after discovering its worth she decides to use the money to attain the lease for the pub and reopen it as The Prince Albert, a first for Walford’s gay community.
Beale wears a feather boa as she poses next to the venue’s sign – a top hat-wearing face with lipstick and a beauty spot – in a first image of the venue’s entrance.
It will be a twin-club named after Queen Vic’s husband, Prince Albert.
Previously run by Kim Fox and Vincent Hubbard as The Albert, it was Aidan Maguire who last owned the bar after strong-arming Vincent into selling it to him.
In its new guise, The Prince Albert will offer an alternative to The Queen Vic, providing a space for the show’s LGBT characters such as Bernadette Taylor, played by Clair Norris, and Tina Carter, played by Luisa Bradshaw-White.
It also sees a reclaim of Kathy’s own history.
Under the guise as The Dagmar, Kathy was raped in the bar by its evil owner James Wilmott-Brown.
She successfully dealt with him when he made a return with a bizarre scheme to gentrify Walford, and now with the new business operating there she has well and truly beaten him.
And if she is going to help her son Ben turn away from his new evil ways with the bar and help him find love, then all the better.
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