EastEnders icon Anita Dobson has revealed her emotion after returning to the BBC soap’s set after almost four decades.
The star played the incomparable Angie Watts for just three years from the show’s inception in 1985, but quickly cemented herself as a fan-favourite.
As the original Queen Vic landlady, Ang is best remembered for her turbulent relationship with husband Den (Leslie Grantham), with the pair scooping an impressive 30.1 million viewers when their divorce papers were dealt at Christmas 1986.
Just months earlier, they were also the centre of the first ever game-changing two-hander episode.
After struggling with alcoholism and kidney failure, she fled for a new life in Spain.
Fourteen years after Anita’s exit, the character was killed off, off-screen, after suffering from cirrhosis of the liver and alcohol-related dementia.
To celebrate the drama’s 40th anniversary, which takes place next week, she’s made a poignant trip back to the Hertfordshire production base where she became a household name in 1985.
Whilst we won’t see Angie back in regular episodes of EastEnders, Anita will share memories from her time on the show in new documentary 40 Years on The Square.
Fronted by Grant Mitchell actor Ross Kemp, the special edition explores groundbreaking, memorable moments from the last four decades.
Fans will undoubtedly be thrilled to see her catch-up with on-screen daughter Letitia Dean, who plays Sharon Watts.
Captivated by their reunion, Ross asks Anita how it feels to be together again after so long.
‘Absolutely wonderful!’ she explains.
‘I feel very emotional, very happy. She looks beautiful, I love her to bits.’
Letitia chirps: ‘Anita was like a second mum to me.’
Clear that their bond stretches far beyond our TV screens, Anita goes on to reveal: ‘She was the baby girl I never had.’
The trio then look over a series of production stills and publicity photos, including one with their much-loved pooch Roly the poodle.
Remembering the canine companion, Anita adds: ‘That dog, you would say “action”, he’d sit up, you’d say “cut” and he’d relax!’
Another familiar face staging a comeback is Pam St Clement, whose character Pat Butcher died in 2012. She returned four years later as a hallucination for Barbara Windsor’s final Peggy Mitchell scenes.
‘When I got the part of Pat like any actor I decided to do a bit of homework, I saw this bus conductress on a number 38 bus and she was wearing these most dangly earrings… Pat always wears the earring that fit her mood’ she tells Ross.
‘You know those tool boxes you can get that fold up?
‘I had one of those and a wall bracket with dangling earrings, but the interesting thing is most of them came from viewers.’
With Ross surprised that viewers donated the jewellery themselves, Pam responds: ‘They’d say – “I saw these in the market and I thought they were absolutely right for Pat!”‘
EastEnders: 40 Years on The Square, airs Monday, February 17th at 8pm on BBC One.
