Former EastEnders star Shona McGarty has paid tribute to the late June Brown, describing her as “brilliant.”

Brown, who played Dot Cotton on for a total of 31 years, passed away in 2022 at the age of 95, two years after her final

appearance on the BBC soap.

McGarty, who played Whitney Dean on the soap before her own departure earlier this year, appeared on the Tis Yourself podcast to discuss her experience on the show, sharing that Brown was her favourite colleague to work with.

“She was Whitney’s step-grandma, so working with her was always brilliant,” recalled McGarty. “She used to say to me, ‘If you want to know how to get to my age, [a] handful of nuts a day will keep the doctor away.’

“And I never knew what she meant by that. And as an adult, I’m like, ‘Oh, I’m not sure if she was trying to be funny’. But, you know, that’s what I live by now. Maybe I need to take that on board,” she continued, before speaking about Brown’s smoking habit.

“She smoked so many cigarettes. And she reckons that that’s what kept her going. I suppose it’s always synonymous with watching her,” surmised McGarty. “I remember them coming in and she’d have a cigarette and they come in and they clip it.

“They make it the same length in every take. But by this time, she’d have smoked about 80 fags. And she used to wear this iconic perfume. I think it was called Fifth Avenue. And you could smell her down the corridors.

“You’d know she was in. And she was just so lovely. And I remember being 16 and new to the show. And she gave me a little snowglobe and it had Dorothy in it. I’ve still got that,” added the star.