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Neighbourhood > Guest Character Profiles > Alex Carter Kevin Summers

When Shane Ramsay’s car suffered a tyre blow-out and crashed, leaving his passenger, Jean Richards, dead, a passing motorist stopped to help before the emergency services arrived. The man gave Shane some brandy to calm his nerves, before leaving. As a result of this, Shane was found to be over the limit and charged with reckless driving. Realising that the kind stranger was his one hope of the escaping the charges, Shane desperately tried to track him down, little realising that he’d been working at the Waterhole pub all along. Paul Robinson had hired Alex Carter as his new bar manager and, as Paul introduced them one day, Alex immediately recognised Shane, who was finally able to clear his name.

Meanwhile, Alex had another motive for befriending the locals of Erinsborough. As he chatted to them at the bar, he found out various pieces of information which enabled him to know which houses were best to rob. When the Murphy family went away on holiday, Lucy Robinson spotted Alex breaking in, but only caught a quick glimpse. Because of her paper round, she knew that the family was away and reported this to her father. Alex, however, was busy getting friendly with the people of Ramsay Street and nobody suspected that they had a burglar in their midst when he went to the Ramsay house for dinner, as a thank you for helping Shane. The following day, in the bar, Alex was chatting to Clive Gibbons when he found out about Clive’s brother, Graham, owning an extremely valuable photo album. Alex couldn’t resist and, when he popped round to the house later on, and found out from Tom Ramsay that nobody was home, he decided to break in and steal the album. Unfortunately, Graham’s young daughter, Vicki, who was supposedly being babysat by Charlene Mitchell, had a fight with Lucy and stormed off home, letting herself in with the spare key. She caught Alex in the act, but he warned her that if she told anyone, he’d return to the house and kill her parents.

Although a concerned Vicki eventually told the police, she still had no idea who the man was, so was unable to help the police track him down. However, when Alex caught the ‘flu and went to the doctor’s surgery – run by Graham Gibbons – it proved to be his undoing. A nervous Vicki had been given the day off school and was hanging around the surgery with her father, when she spotted Alex in the waiting room. She recognised him straight away and told her father, who asked her to wait in the store room whilst he dealt with things. Graham asked Alex into his office, but Alex quickly realised that he’d been set up and attacked Graham, knocking him out, before running off. Alex then proceeded to the pub, where he took the day’s takings and vanished. It wasn’t long before everyone pieced things together and, with his brother recovering in hospital and his niece traumatised, Clive felt like he had to do something. A few days later, Clive saw Alex a few blocks away from Ramsay Street. Alex, however, also spotted Clive and quickly jumped in his car and sped off, with Clive giving chase. The cars reached a dead end at a local quarry and Alex attempted to run away, but fell, badly injuring himself. At first, Clive considered walking away, but his medical training got the better of him and he returned to help, before driving Alex to the hospital, where the police arrested him.

Notes: Kevin Summers returned to Neighbours in 1997 as Detective Harris, in 1998 as Cliff Browning, in 2001 and 2002 as Detective Goldstein and between 2003 and 2005 as Detective Alec Skinner.

Biography by Steve

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