As we move on through the characters of Eastenders how could we not forget the friendly and very helpful Dr Legg. He was always around to provide his concern, compassion and sympathetic approach to the sick and not so sick residents of Walford.
King's College London (informally King's or KCL) is a public research university located in London, England. King's was established by royal charter in 1829 under the patronage of King George IV and the Duke of Wellington. In 1836, King's became one of the two founding colleges of the University of London. It is one of the oldest university-level institutions in England. In the late 20th century, King's grew through a series of mergers, including with Queen Elizabeth College and Chelsea College of Science and Technology (in 1985), the Institute of Psychiatry (in 1997), the United Medical and Dental Schools of Guy's and St Thomas' Hospitals and the Florence Nightingale School of Nursing and Midwifery (in 1998).
Leonard Fenton (né Finestein; 29th April 1926 – 29th January 2022) was a British actor, director and painter, best known for his role as Dr. Harold Legg in EastEnders.
Fenton was born Leonard Finestein in Stepney, the son of Fanny (Goldberg) and Morris Feinstein, a women's garment maker. His parents were Ashkenazi Jews with ancestral roots in Eastern Europe (Riga in Latvia and Lithuania). He attended Raine Foundation Grammar School from 1937 to 1944. Fenton originally trained to be a civil engineer at King's College London and during World War II he was conscripted as an army engineer. He worked in this profession for five years after leaving the army, but eventually decided on a career change. He took up acting and won a scholarship to attend the Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art in London.
Prominent graduates from Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art include celebrities, politicians, business people, athletes and more. Eva Green went to the Academy..
Eva Gaëlle Green (Swedish: born 6th July 1980) is a French actress and model. The daughter of actress Marlène Jobert, she started her career in theatre before making her film debut in Bernardo Bertolucci's The Dreamers (2003). She achieved international recognition for her portrayal of Sibylla, Queen of Jerusalem in Ridley Scott's historical epic Kingdom of Heaven (2005). The following year, she played Bond girl Vesper Lynd in the James Bond film Casino Royale (2006), for which she received the BAFTA Rising Star Award. Green has since starred in numerous independent films, including Cracks (2009), Womb (2010), and Perfect Sense (2011). In 2014, she played Artemisia in the 300 sequel, 300: Rise of an Empire, and Ava Lord in Frank Miller and Robert Rodriguez's Sin City sequel, Sin City: A Dame to Kill For. Green is also known for her collaborations with director Tim Burton, starring as Angelique Bouchard in the horror comedy film Dark Shadows (2012), Miss Alma Peregrine in the fantasy film Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children (2016), and Colette Marchant in the fantasy film Dumbo (2019). Green starred as Morgan Pendragon in the Starz historical fantasy series Camelot (2011). She also starred as Vanessa Ives in the Showtime horror drama series Penny Dreadful (2014–2016), earning a nomination for Best Actress in a Television Series – Drama at the 73rd Golden Globe Awards.
Kingdom of Heaven - Eva Green.
Leonard Fenton's career in acting spanned over sixty years. One of his earliest acting breaks came when he was offered a role by Orson Welles in his play Chimes at Midnight. Subsequent acting credits include: Studio Four (1962); Colditz (1974); Secret Army (1977); Z-Cars (1978); Play for Today (1981); Auf Wiedersehen, Pet (1983), and Shine on Harvey Moon (1982), where he played the Austrian Jew, Erich Gottlieb. In the theatre, Fenton played the role of Willie to Billie Whitelaw’s Winnie in Samuel Beckett’s Happy Days at the Royal Court Theatre in 1979, directed by Beckett himself.
Colditz is a British television drama series co-produced by the BBC and Universal Studios and screened between 1972 and 1974. The series deals with Allied prisoners of war imprisoned at the supposedly escape-proof Colditz Castle when designated Oflag IV-C during World War II, and their many attempts to escape captivity, as well as the relationships formed between the various nationalities and their German captors. Colditz was created by Brian Degas working with the producer Gerard Glaister, who went on to devise another successful BBC series dealing with the Second World War, Secret Army. Technical consultant for the series was Major Pat Reid, the real British Escape Officer at Colditz. One of the locations used in filming was Stirling Castle.
Play for Today is a British television anthology drama series, produced by the BBC and transmitted on BBC1 from 1970 to 1984. During the run, more than three hundred programmes, featuring original television plays, and adaptations of stage plays and novels, were transmitted. The individual episodes were between fifty and a hundred minutes in duration. A handful of these plays, including Rumpole of the Bailey, subsequently became television series in their own right.
Samuel Beckett’s Happy Days at Riverside Studios.
happy days (1980)
“If I wasn’t skint, I would have paid them,” Belfast actor Simon Wolfe says of the joy of being back in the theatre. After theatres being shut down for over a year, Simon can now be seen with Lisa Dwan in the 60th anniversary production of Samuel Beckett’s Happy Days at Riverside Studios. Revered as one of Ireland’s greatest ever playwrights, Samuel Beckett was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1969. Plays such as Endgame, Krapp’s Last Tape and Waiting for Godot as well as Happy Days are considered to be some of the finest ever written. And the run takes place at the same Riverside Studios where the playwright rehearsed Endgame in 1980 and Waiting for Godot in 1984. Simon told The Irish World: “He’s one of the masters really because I think you can go and watch a Beckett play and take away your own story. “You’re confronted with your own story of it. “You’re not confronted with ‘Oh, this is this person’s life. And this is the way you have to relate to it’. “I think that’s why he never described what his plays are about. “People would say, ‘Oh, what’s your play about?’ And he was like, ‘I don’t know’.
happy days (1980)
Happy Days (2000)
Happy Days (2000)
A middle-aged woman, half-buried in the earth, chatters away to a taciturn man, who lives in a hole behind her. Later, she is buried up to her neck, and the man does not seem to be about. "Happy Days is an adaptation of Samuel Beckett's challenging absurdist drama, a play most would deem unfilmable. Faithfully adhering to Beckett's minimalist original, a black parody of love, marriage, and our search for meaning in an unfathomable universe, the piece consists of but two pathetic characters. One, wife Winnie, spends the duration of the drama half-buried in a pile of dirt; in true Beckett fashion, her predicament is never explained. The other character, husband Willie, is almost never seen. Dublin stage and screen veteran Rosaleen Linehan, in the lead, is exceptional as the trapped woman clinging to the empty, arbitrary routines and rituals of life, ever hopeful that 'this is going to be a happy day.'" Synopsis written by Dog Breath
Fenton was best known for playing Dr. Harold Legg, one of the original characters in the BBC soap opera, EastEnders. The character appeared from the show's inception in 1985 until 1997, returning for brief stints in 2000, 2004, 2007 and 2018 until 2019. The character was originally one of the main focal points of the programme, but after 1989 he became less central. After the character's retirement in 1997, Fenton's appearances in EastEnders were infrequent. He made a single appearance in 2004 at the funeral of Mark Fowler, and in June 2007 to counsel Dot Branning regarding her concerns about Romanian 'foundling' baby, Tomas.
The charismatic Dr. Legg a popular character around the square..
Fenton's subsequent television credits included Rumpole of the Bailey; So You Think You've Got Troubles (1991); Love Hurts (1993) and The Bill (1985; 2001; 2005), among others. In the West End, he performed in two productions by Lindsay Anderson, Anton Chekhov's The Seagull and Ben Travers' last play, The Bed Before Yesterday. He performed in many radio plays, including The Hobbit as the Elvenking, and The Lord of the Rings as Daddy Twofoot, both for BBC Radio 4. Amongst Fenton's other broadcasting work was the BBC webcast of the Doctor Who story Death Comes to Time. On 17th February 2006, he made a personal appearance on the Channel 4 entertainment show, The Friday Night Project. His film credits included roles in Up the Creek (1958), The Devil-Ship Pirates (1964), Robin Hood Junior (1975), Give My Regards to Broad Street (1984), Morons from Outer Space (1985), and the British horror movie The Zombie Diaries (2006).
Wogan (1988) with Adam Faith, Anita Dobson, Mike Read, Labi Siffre, Julie Walters
Rumpole of the Bailey is a British television series created and written by the British writer and barrister John Mortimer. It starred Leo McKern as Horace Rumpole, a middle-aged London barrister who defended a broad variety of clients, often underdogs. The TV series led to the stories being presented in other media, including books and radio. The "Bailey" of the title is a reference to the Central Criminal Court, the "Old Bailey".
Wogan (1988) with Adam Faith, Anita Dobson, Mike Read, Labi Siffre, Julie Walters.
Terence Nelhams Wright (23rd June 1940 – 8th March 2003), known as Adam Faith, was an English singer, actor, and financial journalist. A teen idol, he scored consecutive No. 1 hits on the UK Singles Chart with "What Do You Want?" (1959) and "Poor Me" (1960). He became the first UK artist to lodge his initial seven hits in the top 5, and was ultimately one of the most charted acts of the 1960s. He was also one of the first UK acts to record original songs regularly. Faith also maintained an acting career, appearing as Dave in the teen exploitation film Beat Girl (1960), the eponymous lead in the ITV television series Budgie (1971–1972) and Frank Carver in the BBC comedy drama Love Hurts (1992–1994).
Zoë Wanamaker with Adam Faith in the TV Series Love Hurts.
Doctor Who | Death Comes to Time | Episode 1 | Remastered |
Doctor Who | Death Comes to Time | Episode 1 | Remastered |
Please click on the Tardis for more episodes of Doctor Who - Death Comes to Time..
Up the Creek is a 1958 British comedy film written and directed by Val Guest and starring David Tomlinson, Peter Sellers, Wilfrid Hyde-White, David Lodge and Lionel Jeffries.
Paul McCartney in "Give My Regards to Broad Street".
ROBIN HOOD JUNIOR is a children's adventure, from 1975, in which a group of boys take on Prince John in order help Maid Marian and save a member of their own gang who has been taken hostage.
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Cast
Keith Chegwin, Mandy Tulloch, Keith Jayne
A youthful Keith Chegwin
Give My Regards to Broad Street is a 1984 British musical drama film directed by Peter Webb. It stars Paul McCartney, Bryan Brown and Ringo Starr. The film covers a fictional day in the life of McCartney, who wrote the film for the screen, and McCartney, Starr and Linda McCartney all appeared as themselves. Despite Give My Regards to Broad Street being unsuccessful, both financially and critically, its soundtrack album sold well. The title is a take on George M. Cohan's classic show tune "Give My Regards to Broadway" and makes reference to London's Broad Street railway station, which would close in 1986. Filming and recording of Broad Street began in November 1982, after the completion of Pipes of Peace. Production on the album and film continued until July the following year. In the interim, Pipes of Peace and its singles were released, and the film project was thus scheduled for an autumn 1984 release once an appropriate amount of time had passed.
Please click on the image to the left for the album Give my Regards to Broad Street 1984.
In December 2004, at the age of 78, Fenton made his directorial debut with After Chekhov, written by four contemporary writers Allen Drury, Martin Jago, Andrew Neil and Olwen Wymark in the 100th anniversary year of Chekhov's death. The piece, produced by Little London Theatre Company was performed in the Soho Theatre Studio. In 2012 and again in 2013, Fenton appeared in a production of Cross Purpose, directed by Stephen Whitson at the King's Head Theatre, London. On 25th July 2018, it was confirmed that Fenton would reprise his role as Dr. Harold Legg in EastEnders in late 2018. This stint lasted until 15 February 2019, when the character died after a long battle with pancreatic cancer.
Dot Cotton is concerned for her doctor..
After Chekhov
Credits
Company : Compagnie Samolœt
Photo : Compagnie Samolœt
This year’s Manipulate Festival brings the first of three shows to Norwich Puppet Theatre. La Compagnie Samoloet travels from its Parisian home to showcase After Chekhov – a performance inspired by Anton Chekhov’s play Three Sisters. Its director, Anna Ivanova-Brashinskaya, worked closely with the ensemble cast to create the show together. Founded in 2016, the relatively young company is built on the principles of theatre d’auteur which sees all performers workshop and compose a performance as one. Polina Borisova, Vitalia Samuilova and Sacha Poliakova perform to a sprightly piano score by Roman Dymny.
The three performers utilise their Russian training in their approach to the nineteenth century Russian playwright and writer. Chekhov’s themes of family and homeland steal their way into mirrors, clothes, family photos and tiny Victorian dolls. The dolls dance into life as childlike puppets on the end of extendable rods. Small, old-fashioned wire beds transform into windows to gaze from on the endless nights. Each character recreates their family life through the objects, raising the question of what is real or imagined.
The physical world they create is powerful in its symbolism. Bunched reeds dot sparsely across the stage, providing a straggly forest. We watch an old photo album transform into mansion house windows holding a tiny darting light within. The charming creepiness of the dolls carries sinister undertones. When one character is visited by the possible memory of childhood, the foreboding atmosphere mounts. Long skirts wash over her face in the dark that spark tingles of unease in the audience. A light-hearted finale relieves the tension when the three girls transform into small birds and flutter cheekily to Tchaikovsky’s Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy.
A homage to Russian literature and culture, After Chekhov is best appreciated with a familiarity with his plays and the themes he explores. In many ways, I spent too much of the performance trying earnestly to piece together a narrative that wasn’t necessarily there. But in the end, the team delivers a beautifully melodious presentation on the homeland, underscored by striking visuals and stirring sound.
ADDYA PANAYIOTOU
directed by Stephen Whitson
2012 Cross Purpose directed by Stephen Whitson
Fenton and cellist Madeline Thorner married in 1967. They had four children and later separated. Aside from acting, he was also a professional painter and held several exhibitions. Before the 2010 general election, Fenton came out in support of the Labour Party, after appearing in their election broadcast. He died on 29th January 2022, at the age of 95. His former co-star June Brown memorialised him as "A charming man in all ways, first as a person and then as an actor, extremely polite and kind".
Leonard Fenton with (L-R) singer Marti Webb, Coronation Street star Chris Quentin and television personality Kate Robbins in 1987.
Dr Legg first appears in EastEnders when it begins on 19 February 1985. He is the local doctor for Walford, where he had lived most of his life, opening his practice there in 1947. His Jewish family had moved out of the East End when Oswald Mosley began his fascist marches in the 1930s. They moved to Finchley in North London, but young Harold commuted daily to his East End grammar school, to avoid any disruption to his education. He went to St Bartholomew's Hospital to start his medical training in 1940, treated air raid casualties, and met and married a non-Jewish nurse, named Judith Martin. They bought a small house in Albert Square. They lived there happily, but during the war a German bomb exploded near number 5 Albert Square and killed Judith. He never remarried, despite the hard work of matchmaking aunts and Dr Legg since devotes his life to keeping the residents of Albert Square healthy.
The doctor appeared in a total of 267 episodes of the long-running BBC soap opera.
EastEnders - Dr Legg's First Appearance (19th February 1985)
EastEnders - Dr Legg's First Appearance (19th February 1985)
A huge amount of Eastenders clips for your entertainment.
June Muriel Brown OBE (16th February 1927 – 3rd April 2022) was an English actress and author. She was best known for her role as Dot Cotton on the BBC soap opera EastEnders (1985–1993; 1997–2020). In 2005, she won Best Actress at the Inside Soap Awards and received the Lifetime Achievement award at The British Soap Awards. Brown was appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in the 2008 Birthday Honours for services to drama and to charity, and promoted to an OBE in the 2022 New Year Honours. In 2009, she was nominated for the BAFTA TV Award for Best Actress, making her the second performer to receive a BAFTA nomination for their work in a soap opera, after Jean Alexander. In February 2020, at the age of 93, she announced that she had left EastEnders permanently.
Brown was born on 16th February 1927 in Needham Market, Suffolk, one of five children of Louisa Ann (née Butler) and Henry William Melton Brown. Her ancestry included English, Irish and Scottish, and from her maternal grandmother, Sephardic Jewish (from Algeria, the Netherlands and Italy). Through her grandmother, she was descended from the noted Jewish bare-knuckle boxer Isaac Bitton. Brown was educated at St John's Church of England School in Ipswich and then won a scholarship to Ipswich High School, where she passed the school certificate examinations. During the Second World War, she was evacuated to the Welsh village of Pontyates in Carmarthenshire. During the later years of the war, she served in the Wrens and was classically trained at the Old Vic Theatre School in Lambeth, London.
Brown had a long television career, with small roles in Coronation Street as Mrs Parsons (1970–71); the Play for Today, Edna, the Inebriate Woman as Clara (1971); the Doctor Who story The Time Warrior as Lady Eleanor (1973–74); the nursing soap Angels; the history-of-Britain Churchill's People; long-running comedy drama Minder; the police drama soap The Bill; and cult sci-fi series Survivors. She had a bigger part as Mrs Leyton in the costume drama The Duchess of Duke Street (1976), and played Mrs Mann in Oliver Twist (1985).
The Doctor Who story The Time Warrior.
The Time Warrior is the first serial of the 11th season of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, which was first broadcast in four weekly parts on BBC1 from 15th December 1973 to 5th January 1974. The serial introduced Elisabeth Sladen as new companion Sarah Jane Smith. It also marked the debut of the Sontaran race. The serial also introduces the name of the Doctor's home planet, Gallifrey. In the serial, the Sontaran Commander Linx (Kevin Lindsay) crash-lands his spaceship in medieval England. He agrees to give futuristic weaponry to the warrior Irongron (David Daker) and his men, in exchange for Linx being given shelter to perform repairs on the damaged spaceship.
Season 1 & 2 - Survivors 1975 - 1977 BBC Complete
Survivors is a British post-apocalyptic fiction drama television series created by Terry Nation and produced by Terence Dudley at the BBC, that broadcast from 1975 to 1977. It concerns the plight of a group of people who have survived an apocalyptic plague pandemic, which was accidentally released by a Chinese scientist and quickly spread across the world via air travel. Referred to as "The Death", the plague kills approximately 4,999 out of every 5,000 human beings on the planet within a matter of weeks of being released.
She also played Nanny Slagg in the BBC's big-budget production of Gormenghast in 2000. She was cast in small roles in several movies, appearing as the grieving mother of an undead biker in British horror flick Psychomania (1971), as well as Sunday Bloody Sunday (1971), Sitting Target (1972), The 14 (1973), Murder by Decree (1979), Nijinsky (1980), The Mambo Kings (1992) and the Mr. Bean movie spin-off Bean (1997). She also appeared as Tom Hedden's wife in Straw Dogs (1971), although her scenes were cut from the film. In 1984, she featured in the TV mini-series Lace which starred actress Phoebe Cates.
Straw Dogs 1971
Straw Dogs with Dustin Hoffman.
Straw Dogs is a 1971 psychological thriller film directed by Sam Peckinpah and starring Dustin Hoffman and Susan George. The screenplay, by Peckinpah and David Zelag Goodman, is based upon Gordon M. Williams's 1969 novel, The Siege of Trencher's Farm. The film's title derives from a discussion in the Tao Te Ching that likens people to the ancient Chinese ceremonial straw dog, being of ceremonial worth, but afterwards discarded with indifference. The film is noted for its violent concluding sequences and two complicated rape scenes, which were censored by numerous film rating boards. Released theatrically in the same year as A Clockwork Orange, The French Connection, and Dirty Harry, the film sparked heated controversy over a perceived increase of violence in films generally. The film premiered in the UK in November 1971. Although controversial at the time, Straw Dogs is considered by some critics to be one of Peckinpah's greatest films, and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Music (Original Dramatic Score). A remake directed by Rod Lurie and starring James Marsden and Kate Bosworth was released on September 16, 2011.
In 2006, Brown appeared as Aunt Spiker at the Children's Party at the Palace, an all-star event to celebrate the Queen's 80th birthday. In 2010, Brown took part in the annual Christmas special of Strictly Come Dancing. Brown said "I'm terrified and apprehensive about what I've let myself in for, I must be barmy and I'm not sure what's come over me ... I just hope I can remember the steps to the routines. I'm looking forward to working with the professional dancers and the other contestants." Her dancing partner was Vincent Simone, with whom she danced the tango. In August 2011 she was featured in the BBC's Who Do You Think You Are?, and was the oldest person to have appeared on the programme. In July 2012, Brown hosted a documentary for the BBC called Respect Your Elders, which looked at society's treatment and attitudes towards the elderly.
June Brown Photograph : BBC Pictures
June Brown and Vincent Simone Photograph : BBC Pictures
June Brown and Vincent Simone photograph : BBC Pictures.
June Brown at Swanage 2004
June Brown at Swanage 2004.
Actress June Brown (aka Dot Cotton, from Eastenders), presents two cheques for local charities at the Swanage Lions Club Annual Country Fair, on Sandpit Field, in 2004. She then goes on to sign autographs. June sadly passed away today, 4th April 2022. R.I.P.
June Brown | The Sweeney | Ringer | Thames television | 1975
June Brown | The Sweeney | Ringer | Thames television | 1975.
The Lion in Winter is a 1968 historical drama film set at Christmas 1183; it centres on political and personal turmoil among the royal family of Henry II of England, his wife Eleanor of Aquitaine, their three surviving sons, and the French king. The film was directed by Anthony Harvey; written by James Goldman (based on his own play of the same name); produced by Joseph E. Levine, Jane C. Nusbaum, and Martin Poll; and starred Peter O'Toole, Katharine Hepburn, John Castle, Anthony Hopkins (in his first major film role), Jane Merrow, Timothy Dalton (in his film debut) and Nigel Terry. The film was a commercial success and won three Academy Awards, including Hepburn's historic tie with Barbra Streisand for Best Actress, making Hepburn the first three-time winner in the category. A television remake of the film was made in 2003.
The Lion in Winter is also a 1966 play by James Goldman, depicting the personal and political conflicts of Henry II of England, his wife Eleanor of Aquitaine, their children and their guests during Christmas 1183. It premiered on Broadway at the Ambassador Theatre on March 3, 1966, starring Robert Preston and Rosemary Harris, who won a Tony Award for her portrayal of Eleanor. It was adapted by Goldman into an Academy Award-winning 1968 film of the same name, starring Peter O'Toole and Katharine Hepburn. The play has been produced numerous times, including Broadway and West End revivals.
The Lion in Winter - Guthrie Theater. Click image above for more info.
The Lion in Winter
Carrollton Cultural Arts Center production of James Goldman's play, "The Lion in Winter". The play depicts the personal and political conflicts between Henry II of England, his wife Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine, and their children and their guests during Christmas in the year 1183.
Noël Coward Theatre, St Martin's Lane, London, WC2N 4AU - Please click image above to find out what's on..
Calendar Girls..
Letitia Dean with Lesley Grantham..
Brown was recommended to producers for the role of Dot Cotton in EastEnders by one of its original cast members, Leslie Grantham, who played Den Watts. Brown played the role from 1985 to 2020, with a break between 1993 and 1997. On 31st January 2008, aged 80, Brown became the first and, to date, only soap actor to carry an entire episode single-handed. The episode featured a monologue looking back over her character's life, dictated to a cassette machine for her husband Jim to listen to in hospital following a stroke. The fact that co-star and close friend John Bardon (who played Jim) was recovering from a stroke in real life added extra pathos to the episode. In 2009, Brown was nominated for the British Academy Television Award for Best Actress. Brown's nomination came as a result of her "single-hander" episode of EastEnders, the director of which she praised.
Dorothy "Dot" Branning (also Cotton) with Jim Branning.
John Bardon (born John Michael Jones, 25th August 1939 – 12th September 2014) was an English stage and screen actor. He was awarded the Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actor in a Musical in 1988 (1987 season) for Kiss Me, Kate, sharing the award with co-star Emil Wolk. He was best known for playing the patriarch of the Branning family, Jim Branning, in the BBC soap opera, EastEnders, for 13 years from 1996 to 2011.
On 30th April 2012, it was announced that Brown was to take a six-month break from EastEnders and planned to write her autobiography during her time off. In October 2012, it was announced she had returned to filming, and she appeared on screen again from January 2013. Her autobiography, Before the Year Dot, was published in 2013. In May 2015, Brown revealed that her eyesight was failing due to macular degeneration. Later, in 2016, a storyline for Dot in which her eyesight was deteriorating was introduced. Speaking about the condition in April 2019, Brown said that it had worsened since undergoing surgery in 2017, and that she no longer went out socially because of her eyesight: "I never go to soap awards or suchlike now. I don't recognise people that I know and they would think I was snubbing them." On 20th February 2020, Brown announced that she had left EastEnders.
Robert Arnold changed her life - and they built an incredible family (Image: Reveille)
In 1950, Brown met and married actor John Garley; he suffered from depression and killed himself in 1957. In 1958, she married actor Robert Arnold. They had six children in seven years, one of whom died in infancy. The couple were together for 45 years, until he died in 2003 of Lewy-body dementia. Thereafter, she lived alone in Surrey. Brown was a supporter of the Conservative Party and told The Guardian in 2009, "I wouldn't vote Labour, dear, if you paid me. I vote Conservative." Like her EastEnders character, she was a Christian. Brown was appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in the 2008 Birthday Honours and Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2022 New Year Honours, both for services to drama and to charity.
Romance: With Sub Lieutenant Colin Parsey. June joined the Women’s Royal Naval Services – better known as the Wrens – in her late teens, and hints at flings with other men.
Carefree: In a Sub Lieutenant's car in Somerset.
Brown died on 3rd April 2022, aged 95. On the announcement of her death, the following day, EastEnders paid tribute to Brown and posted condolences from several of her former co-stars on social media, including Gillian Taylforth, Natalie Cassidy, Lacey Turner, Diane Parish, Emma Barton, Shona McGarty, Adam Woodyatt and Letitia Dean. The episode broadcast that evening was dedicated to her memory. Following this, the documentary June Brown: A Walford Legend, which originally aired in 2017, to celebrate Brown's 90th birthday, and her 2011 episode of Who Do You Think You Are?, were aired on BBC One, in a change to the original schedule.
Gillian Taylforth (born 14 August 1955) is an English actress. She is best known for her role as Kathy Beale on the BBC soap opera EastEnders, and has also appeared as Jackie Pascoe/Webb on ITV's Footballers' Wives (2002–2006), and as Sgt. Nikki Wright in ITV's The Bill (2006–2008). She has also appeared in film during her early career, has presented on ITV's Loose Women and appeared as a celebrity contestant on Strictly Come Dancing in 2008. In January 2013, she was a contestant in Celebrity Big Brother. From May 2013 she played Sandy Roscoe on Channel 4 soap opera Hollyoaks, but left in Summer 2014, and returned in December to again leave with Joe Roscoe in January 2015. Despite her EastEnders character being presumed dead after being killed off-screen in 2006, Taylforth made a shock return to the show in February 2015 as part of the 30th anniversary episode. The BBC later confirmed that she would reprise the role of Kathy permanently later in the year and she appeared again regularly from August 2015.
Lacey Amelia Turner (Left) (born 28th March 1988) is an English actress. She is known for portraying the role of Stacey Slater on the BBC soap opera EastEnders (2004–2010, 2014–present), for which she has won over thirty awards, including four National Television Awards and ten British Soap Awards. She has also appeared on Bedlam, Switch (both 2012) and Our Girl (2013–2014).
Diane Parish (born 1st November 1969) is an English actress, who has been portraying the character Denise Fox on the BBC One soap opera EastEnders since 2006. Born in Chelsea, London and a graduate of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, Parish has appeared on British television for over two decades. She has appeared in a number of TV shows over the years, including the ITV dramas The Bill and M.I.T.: Murder Investigation Team playing Detective Eva Sharpe. She is also known for appearing in two series of the BBC One comedy-drama Lovejoy (1993–1994).
Emma Louise Barton (born 26th July 1977) is an English actress. She is perhaps best known for the role of Honey Mitchell in EastEnders which she has portrayed on and off since November 2005. Before her role in EastEnders, Barton appeared in Spooks and on stage in plays including Grease. In 2019, Barton competed in the seventeenth series of Strictly Come Dancing, paired with professional Anton du Beke, reaching the Grand Final.
Before joining EastEnders, McGarty had been involved in amateur musical theatre for six years, including a role in Wizard of Oz. In July 2012, McGarty was suspended from EastEnders by the acting executive producer Lorraine Newman "for repeatedly being late for filming". McGarty later regretted her behaviour as "lazy and irresponsible". The same year, McGarty performed the song A Change is Gonna Come for Children in Need 2012. In 2018, McGarty joined 26 other celebrities and performed an original Christmas song called Rock With Rudolph, a song written and produced by Grahame and Jack Corbyn. The song was recorded in aid of Great Ormond Street Hospital and was released digitally on independent record label Saga Entertainment on 30 November 2018 under the artist name The Celebs. The music video debuted exclusively with The Sun on 29 November 2018 and had its first TV showing on Good Morning Britain on 30 November 2018. In 2021, McGarty reunited with Saga Entertainment to record a cover of The Beatles classic "Let It Be", recorded at Metropolis Studios, in support of British charity Mind and released on 3rd December 2021. McGarty was backed by a choir of celebrities including Georgia Hirst, Anne Hegerty, Ivan Kaye and Eunice Olumide who performed as part of the 2021 line up of The Celebs
Adam Woodyatt
On 8th April 1998, Woodyatt married dancer Beverley Sharp in a private ceremony at Disney World, Florida. The couple have two children, and for many years lived in Southam, Warwickshire, some 72 miles northwest of the BBC Elstree Studios in south Hertfordshire, where EastEnders is recorded. On 21 August 2020, it was revealed that Woodyatt had decided to separate from Sharp the previous year, after more than twenty years of marriage. Woodyatt is a supporter of Liverpool F.C. and has been described by Digital Spy as a "huge sci-fi fanatic" Adam Brinley Woodyatt (born 28th June 1968) is an English actor. He is known for his role as Ian Beale in the BBC soap opera EastEnders, which he played between 1985 and 2022.
Ian has gone on to be the longest running character in the soap's history. Woodyatt confirmed his desire to remain with the show in 2010, during the show's 25th anniversary: "Why would I want to leave when I'm not going to get the chance to portray even half the range of emotions I get to here in a one-off drama or a six-part series? And you're not going to get the same viewing figures either. You have your moments when things go wrong and you perhaps don't want to work with a certain person. In any office there are going to be people who don't get along but you get on with it and on the whole I enjoy it. Over the last couple of years we've had a really tight crew and it's the best atmosphere I can remember. There have been peaks and troughs, like with any show, but right now things are good."