Blossom Jackson is the grandmother of Malcolm and Alan Jackson and great-grandmother of Billie and Kai Jackson. She made her first appearance on 16 May 1994, and her last appearance on 26 October 2010. She is portrayed by Mona Hammond.
Backstory[]
Blossom Jackson is the grandmother of Alan Jackson. Originally from Tobago, born in July 1926, she came to Britain as a young child and grew up in East London. Her first marriage to a man named Nathan ended after he deserted her. She spent later life with her second husband, Bill, until he died in 1993.
Storylines[]
1994-1995: Moving to Walford and gaining extended family[]
Blossom first appears in May 1994. Her flat in Wapping gets burgled and she goes to live with grandson Alan and his girlfriend Carol Jackson at 25 Albert Square in Walford.
Although she is not blood-related to Carol's other children, Bianca, Robbie and Sonia Jackson, she loves them as if she were. Blossom is a great support to Carol during her time living in Albert Square, often providing a sympathetic ear when she needs a shoulder to cry on.
She works in Kathy Beale's café and has a brief romance Jules Tavernier - even moving in with him temporarily when the Jacksons' house is damaged in a gas explosion in 1995. However, their relationship does not progress into anything serious.
1996-1997: Relationship with Felix and caught up in a robbery[]
She later embarks on a more serious relationship with local barber Felix Kawalski. Felix is a Jewish Holocaust survivor who was separated from his family as a child. Even though Felix does not know where his family are - or even if they are still alive - he has spent his whole life trying to find them. He eventually tracks his sister down in Israel and, after making contact with her, he decides to live with her there.
In February 1997, Blossom is looking after Billie and takes him shopping for some new trainers. They stop off at a building society, which gets raided by armed robbers. Luckily, they were unharmed, but Billie reveals that he saw them without their masks on - meaning that he could potentially identify the criminals.
Felix returns for a brief visit and asks Blossom to move to Israel with him. She accepts his offer and leaves Walford in May 1997.
Off screen, Blossom later returns to England to live with Alan and Billie in Balham.
2010: Return for Billie's funeral[]
By February 2010, Alan and Carol have apparently split, with Carol and Billie moving to back to Walford and Alan to Forest Hill, leaving the whereabouts of Blossom unknown. However, she returns to Walford in October 2010 with Alan, his wife and their son Kai Jackson, for Billie's funeral (after he dies in his sleep while celebrating his 22nd birthday). When Carol says she cannot go to the funeral, Blossom tells her that they are saying goodbye to Billie no matter what. Afterwards, she tries to convince Carol to go to the wake as she has rejected her entire family. At Billie's wake, Blossom realises that Carol's nephew Bradley Branning has not attended and is told that he died several months earlier. She mentions that Felix had died in 2006. She and her family return home after the wake.