BREAKING STORY OF THE DAY! EastEnders star claims late Dot Cotton actress June Brown asked ‘to help her get an assisted death’

A former EastEnders star has claimed that the late Dot Cotton actress June Brown asked him ‘to help her get an assisted death’.

Dot was known for her devout Christian faith, gossiping and motherly attitude to those in need. Famous storylines involving Dot over the years include dealing with her criminal son Nick Cotton’s (John Altman) wicked ways, battling kidney cancer and becoming the first UK soap character to have a ‘one-hander’ episode entirely to herself.

The episode saw Dot recording a heartfelt tape for her husband, Jim Branning (John Bardon), who was in the hospital after a stroke.

June passed away at the age of 95 in 2022, having made her last appearance on the soap just two years before her death. The actress appeared in over 2,000 episodes of the Albert Square drama.

Now, June’s former co-star Lord Michael Cashman has claimed that she asked him to help her get an assisted death. Lord Cashman comments arrived during the debate on assisted dying in the House of Lords, as the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill fell on Friday afternoon (April 24).

Lor d Cashman starred alongside Ms Brown during his spell on EastEnders in the late 1980s. His character Colin Russell was part of the first on-screen gay kiss on British TV in 1989.

June famously played a central role in one of the major euthanasia storylines on TV, when she helped fellow Albert Square resident Ethel Skinner (Gretchen Franklin) die, after she was diagnosed with terminal cancer in 2000.

Lord Cashman said: “I also remember my dear friend June Brown, who implored me to get her to a country where she could die with dignity and the death that she wanted.”

The Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill fell on Friday, as peers ran out of time to discuss it. It will not become law unless MPs pick it back up in the House of Commons and propose it again.

Former Labour peer Lord Cashman, who is now non-aligned, previously spoken in the House of Lords about seeing a friend suffer who had asked him about an assisted death, but did not identify them.

He said at the time: “When my dear friend of many, many years suffered for months, she knew there was another way and she implored me to help her, my lords, I did.

“I was prepared to break the law as I contacted clinics in the Netherlands and Switzerland. However, it was to come to nothing.”

During Friday’s debate, Lord Cashman said he had also watched his husband of 31 years, Paul Cottingham, die a ‘slow and agonising death’ more than a decade ago.

“I deeply regret, my Lords, that we have not passed this necessary and I believe important Bill, we have not fulfilled the humane wishes of those who seek the right to choose how they die,” he said.