George Knight (Colin Salmon) bids farewell to The Queen Vic in EastEnders next week, in the wake of wife Elaine’s (Harriet Thorpe) affair.

As we’ve seen this week, Elaine was left furious after discovering her husband spent Christmas evening in the company of his ex-wife Sabrina.

While he remained insistent that he rejected her advances, he later went on to seek advice from his other ex-wife, Cindy Beale (Michelle Collins).

This only infuriated Elaine further, and she contacted old mate Drew Peacock (Paul Clayton) for a pep talk. Having taken his words to heart, she decided to hop into bed with a Prince Albert punter named Stephen.

Riddled with guilt, she returned home and was shocked to see George make an impassioned plea to forgive him. At that moment she realised that he hadn’t cheated – but she did.

Still believing that she needed to be won over, and not picking up on her obvious torment, he pulled out all the stops by serenading her in The Vic bar.

Linda Carter (Kellie Bright) urged her mum to come clean, and when she did, it had disastrous consequences. George couldn’t see past her infidelity, even if she was pleading for forgiveness, and started to pack his bags.

In upcoming scenes, Elaine puts on a brave face as George’s best mate Phil Mitchell (Steve McFadden) tries to convince him that he should give her a second chance. After all, he did kiss Cindy last year!

With Phil’s words of wisdom ringing in his ears, George tells his wife that he’s prepared to forgive her, but an enraged Elaine can’t believe that he won’t take responsibility for his part in the break-up and rejects him.

It’s the end of an era as George walks out of their home, but Linda tries to see the more positive side to things by arranging a divorce party to cheer her mum up.

Phil notices how much Linda is struggling behind the bar by herself, and offers to chip in his expertise while Kim and Denise Fox (Tameka Empson and Diane Parish), Mo Harris (Laila Morse), Priya Nandra-Hart (Sophie Khan Levy), Honey Mitchell (Emma Barton) and Yolande Trueman (Angela Wynter) try and perk Elaine up.

Hitting the bottle hard, Elaine proudly announces that all prosecco is on the house for the remainder of the evening. She then offers to book Priya on a singles cruise, telling her that she needn’t worry about paying her back straight away.

The next morning, Linda is horrified to see £5,000 gone from the business account, and a hungover Elaine dismisses her.

Phil feels that she’s gone off the rails, and chastises her for treating Linda poorly. When Elaine tries to broach the subject with her daughter, she downplays her overwhelm.