EASTENDERS star June Brown had “slowed right down” in the month prior to the death, says her on screen son John Altman.
John, who played Nasty Nick on the soap, revealed he saw the Dot Cotton actress just a month before she died at the age of 95.
Asked when he had last seen her on Good Morning Britain today, he replied: “About a month ago. She was tired. She’d slowed right down.
“I’d like to say, so much thanks and god bless her family who’ve been fantastic, rallying round her – they’ve taken great care of her.
“She didn’t have to go into a home or anything. She spent her last days in her lovely home in the Surrey Hills.”
Discussing their time together on screen, which spanned 35 years, he said: “[They were] treasured moments for me in my career, it was such a joy to work with her.
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“She was older than me so she was more experienced – she’d guide me sometimes, say, ‘Slow down a bit on that, dear.’”
He revealed June was a “real stickler” for the script being accurate, and the pair would spend hours going over the lines in her dressing room, while smoking cigarettes.
On their final scenes together, he said: “The last scene we did together was a very emotional affair and the floor manager said, ‘I swore I’d never shed a tear on the floor’, hardened production people but she said, ‘I did today’, after 35 years together, June and I, on and off,” he said, before shedding a light on June’s generosity.
“I used to tell her off – ‘June, you can’t do any more charities’. She said, ‘Oh dear, I have to’. She supported the donkeys, among many others, Children with Cancer, The Taverners – she just couldn’t say no.
“We’d walk to the canteen at the BBC and it would always take about half an hour because she’d stop along the way chatting to people. She was so kind.
“She used to say healing prayers, actually. She was quite a spiritual person – she definitely believed in a higher power, something more than we know, perhaps. We were a good team.”
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