EastEnders viewers are keen to know just how much money Phil Mitchell has – and where it’s come from.

The Walford hardman, who has been played by Steve McFadden, 64, since 1990, recently lost £50,000 to Karen Taylor after she helped her son Keanu set up a fake kidnapping for Sharon Watts’ son, Albie. And weeks later, he handed over £30,000 to his scheming sister Sam so she would leave London after revealing he had secretly bedded Lola Pearce’s mum Emma weeks before his wedding to Kat.

Discussing his spending habits in a fan forum on Digital Spy, one wrote: “I really want someone to calculate Phil’s cash total of lost money. He has lost hundreds of thousands to Kat, Alfie, Karen, Sam and Sam’s ex in separate occasions over the past few years alone. I remember he and Shirley stole some of Roxy’s millions years ago but surely we can’t still be led to believe this is what’s being used.”

Another agreed, adding: “Money in Eastenders is like some sort of unexplained magical phenomenon. The main one is Phils safe being like Harry Potter’s room of requirement- it always has what he needs when he needs it, despite his claims that he ‘can’t get that kind of cash together in a day’. Ditto for the safe in Peggy’s which has been looted at least 3 times in the last year by people who know him well enough to know the combination and he still hasn’t changed it and uses the same combination for the one in the gym.”

One viewer described Phil as having a “feudal” position in the Square, which means that all the other characters must ask him for loans rather than a genuine bank. They wrote: “Phil is the only person who’s allowed to have a successful and profitable business in Albert Square. Everyone else has to be scraping by, and when they have money problems they won’t simply get a bank loan, oh no. They must come grovelling before their feudal master Phil Mitchell for scraps from his table.

“Indeed, it’s actually not clear what Phil’s income is at this point beyond owning various “chicken shops” that were simply money-laundering fronts anyway.”

Other fan mysteries surrounding Phil include his one outfit, and his ability to repeatedly cheat death. One person commented: “Do I even need to get on the Immortal Time Lord which is Phil Mitchell who quite frankly should be six feet under the amount of injuries he’s sustained over the years.”