Charles Cotton

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Charles "Charlie" Cotton is a fictional character from the BBC soap opera EastEnders, played by Christopher Hancock. Charlie was a semi-regular character, introduced in March 1986 as the estranged husband of Dot Cotton. He appeared in stints until producers made the decision to kill the character off-screen in 1991, to aid development of characters connected to him. June Brown, who plays Dot, was openly against the killing of Charlie. Charlie appeared one last time, in October 2000, as an apparition, warning his son Nick to change his ways.

Creation and development
Charlie Cotton, the husband of Dot Cotton (June Brown), was a semi-regular character who came and went throughout his duration in the show; he joined 13 months after the soap's launch in 1986. Depicted as bigamous and a conman, Charlie typically would reappear in the show whenever he needed money or temporary accommodation and, because of Dot's Christian ideals regarding forgiveness, Charlie would always be permitted to return.

According to Christopher Hancock, Charlie was "a truly revolting character, a loser" and the character has been described as a "despicable small-time villain [...] lazy and pathetic". Author Kate Lock has described Charlie as a "sly, shifty, weaselly man". In order to become the character of Charlie, Hancock wore stick on sideburns.

Producers decided to kill Charlie off in 1991; Charlie died off-screen after having a motor accident in his lorry. The decision to kill Charlie was taken in order to reintroduce Charlie's son, Nick (John Altman). Nick had been involved in a storyline that saw him attempt to poison Dot in 1990, and producers felt that in order for Dot to allow Nick back into her life again, something major had to occur in her narrative, that being the death of her husband. Storyline editor, Andrew Holden, has discussed this in the EastEnders Handbook publication in 1991: "We wanted to bring Nick Cotton back and we also wanted to push Dot forward and change her life. But the problem was how? The last time we saw Nick he was attempting to kill his mother. Dot isn't a fool so we knew getting them back together was like a three card trick. How do we get out of this? So we made [Nick] a heroin addict. That made him vulnerable, in a mess and needing his mother to get money for him. We then had to kill Charlie because I figured that only in a state of shock and uncertainty about her belief in God would Dot contemplate forgiving Nick and attempting to reform him. She decides to believe that she can make a decent human being of Nick. She feels it's her last chance. As a widow Dot enters new territory. Dot's snobbery is based on ludicrous misconceptions, one of which is that she is better than [her friend] Ethel because she has a husband. She is going to have a lot of scope [...] Dot's life is going to change."

Actress June Brown was opposed to the killing of Charlie and she attempted to get the programme makers to change their minds. She comments, "I was very unhappy to learn that Charlie would be killed off. I would have preferred if they'd left the door open for him to possibly return one day. I went to see the writers and put this forward. I suggested that there could be some uncertainty about the body. Charlie may have picked up a hitch-hiker and he was the one who died. John Altman, who plays Nick, was also sorry about Charlie. We weren't thinking just about Christopher Hancock, who played Charlie so well, it was that we liked the character and it seemed a waste. But I was too late, I couldn't change their minds. In the past I have talked things through and I was listened to". Charlie's funeral episode, written by Linda Dearsley, aired on 11 July 1991, and was dominated by Dot's reaction to Charlie's death and her trip to identify his body. It is selected by writer Colin Brake as one of 1991's episodes of the year.

The character appeared one last time, brought back as an apparition/ghost, in a dream sequence experienced by Nick in 2000. The episode was entitled EastEnders: the return of Nick Cotton.