EastEnders writer Daran Little has set the record straight on a long-standing myth about the soap’s bus crash.

Fans will likely remember an out-of-control London bus careering through Albert Square in 2017 after its driver had a heart attack and died.

Miraculously, no one else died in the crash, but Whitney Dean (Shona McGarty) and Martin Fowler (James Bye) were trapped under the vehicle with the locals staging a big rescue mission to save them.

However, suspicions among fans were raised after they both staged very quick recoveries and Martin soon returned to work on his fruit and veg stall that was destroyed in the accident. corrienews.info  

Speculation followed that the big stunt was filmed to replace a week of episodes that were scrapped.

As this week marked eight years since the stunt aired, one fan on X claimed to have the real story behind the episodes.

‘The original eps focused on Shirley discovering Buster&Kathy, but the BBC deemed them not good enough to air, so they were scrapped for a stunt,’ they claimed.

‘No one died, and there was no follow-up since it was all last minute.’

The post caught the attention of Daran, who is one of EastEnders’ team of writers.

‘Wrong,’ he said, responding to the post.

‘I wrote these episodes and they didn’t replace Shirley finding out about Buster and Kathy. That discovery was never storylined.

‘Nothing was deemed not good enough,’ he insisted.

vision was very much about us watching people who at the start of the week are in conflict with each other. But then this terrible thing happens and they find all the things that unite them rather than divides them. corrienews.info  

‘It’s about being in touch with what makes you human at the end of the day. The fact you instinctively run towards someone in need, rather than run away. That happens again and again in the episode. People are just reacting instinctively to help people they know and that they don’t know. I guess that’s the over-arching theme of the week, the humanity.