June Brown was just as comforting in real life as her EastEnders character Dot Cotton

A mathematician friend of mine once calculated how much of my life I’d spent watching EastEnders. And while I can’t remember the exact outcome, it’s safe to say it amounted to a lot.

EastEnders has always been a source of comfort. If you’ve had a bad day, you can guarantee a character on the soap would have had a far worse one. There is also nothing like making a cuppa, turning on BBC One, and getting lost in the drama of Albert Square. But it wasn’t just the familiarity and routine that made the show so soothing; so much of that comfort stemmed from watching Dot Cotton, played by the unparalleled June Brown.

Yesterday, after hearing the awful news that she had passed away, the words “legend’ and “icon” dominated my feeds, as people paid their respects to the seasoned soap opera star. Was it because of her hilarious Dot Cotton catchphrases and incessant Bible-quoting? Was it because, both on and off-screen, she was just so quintessentially British? Or was it because she trotted onto Graham Norton’s show with a purse and e-cigarette in hand, in order to meet Lady Gaga? Probably.

But for me, it’s because no actor managed to walk the line of hilarity and pathos quite like June Brown — and certainly no one did for 2,884 episodes on the country’s most popular soap.

You can imagine, then, how excited I was when, as a very young teenager, I got to visit the EastEnders set. My aunt, actress Nina Wadia, had just taken up the role of Zainab Masood. Although I had a crush on a different EastEnders boy every week — shout out to Spencer Moon — I was most starstruck when I met June.

I was introduced to her as she was sitting on a sofa, purse in one hand, cigarettes in the other. She dropped both immediately and greeted me as if I were the most important person she’d ever met, and, most sweetly, held my hand the entire time we spoke. I remember telling her I wanted to be an actress, to which she promptly replied, “Oh, darling, don’t do it!” (Advice I later took).

I remember giggling as she called for someone to grab her a pen and signed me an autograph (which I’ve kept safely to this day), drawing lots of little “dots” around her name. Just before I said goodbye and walked away from her, she squeezed my hand and cracked another joke, before telling me rather seriously to just keep following my dreams, regardless of what they were.

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Looking back, I realise that meeting June evoked the same feelings in me as watching Dot — comfort, joy, admiration. On the show, characters came to Dot for advice, for reassurance, and to sort out their problems. Whether they were going through a divorce, an affair, an addiction, falling in love with their adopted brother or plummeting off the roof of the Queen Vic, often Dot would pick characters up.

When I called my aunt earlier today, she reminisced about June’s “dark wit” (which is probably why some anecdotes she told me aren’t acceptable to print). Nina said: “Genuinely, a piece of my heart broke today at the news of the passing of the legendary June Brown. In reality, she was darkly witty, incredibly strong and a generous human being.

“My time with her on set made me realise I was working with someone extraordinary. Everyone loved her, whether they had only watched her on screen or knew her personally. I learned so much from her. She will be missed by millions of people”.

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Watching June Brown is like watching an acting masterclass. On-screen, she gave a warm familiarity, yet she also managed to draw out performances other actors could only dream of. A lot of these performances on EastEnders were centred around her inner turmoil of loving her son, “Nasty Nick”, and absorbing his guilt. But one episode in particular, titled “Pretty Baby”, saw her reach even greater heights.

Also known as “Dot’s Monologue”, it is the only EastEnders episode to feature just one character, and was the first of its kind to be featured in a soap. It sees Dot recording a message for her husband Jim Branning, who is in hospital recovering from a stroke, reflecting the actor John Bardon’s real-life affliction. The heartbreaking, authentic and reflective performance saw Brown nominated for a BAFTA — the second soap performer to ever achieve this.

Though Brown retired at the time of the soap’s 30th anniversary, she remained the heart of the show, with characters frequently referring to her. And now, as EastEnders actors past and present are continuing to pay tribute to everything she taught them, hopefully her advice will shine through for another 30 years and beyond.

Helena Wadia is co-host of Media Storm, produced by The Guilty Feminist, an investigative journalism podcast that puts people with lived experience at the centre of reporting