Online dating isn’t for me... women might think they’re going to get Nasty Nick
EASTENDERS’ BADDIE LOOKING FOR A SOULMATE
JOHN Altman is looking for love in lockdown – and not having much luck. Having the face of TV’s biggest baddie, thanks to 20 years as EastEnders’ Nick Cotton, is hampering his hunt for someone special.
John said: “I’ve debated whether to join a dating site. What’s putting me off is, people can get confused and think they’re getting a date with Nasty Nick.
“They take one look and don’t know if I’m going to bite their head off. So they think, ‘Maybe I won’t approach him, just to be on the safe side’.
“I’d love to find a soulmate. You get a bit more fussy as you get older and don’t want to date someone just for the sake of it. But I’m going about it the natural way rather than online at the moment.”
Judging from his form on a recent Zoom call, perhaps it’s best 68-year-old John sticks to real-life dates instead of virtual encounters.
He said: “I was invited to a Zoom party for an album launch. So that evening I had a shower and just put a nice shirt on because they’d only see the top half of me sitting at my desk.
“As the party went on, someone asked what time a show was on and I stood up to get my diary.
“There was a gasp from all the boxes on the Zoom call because there was my underwear for all to see. Luckily I did have underwear on.”
As he waits for his dating drought to end, John has made a checklist for Mrs Right. He said: “Blimey, it’s quite a list really. Blonde hair and blue eyes. Petite and good sense of humour.
“A love of the arts, music, movies and swimming – that’s very important. Fastidious, tidy. And a love of the great outdoors. Adventurous spirit. It’s not too tall an order, is it?”
Funnily enough, he recently met someone who fits the bill. Britt Ekland, 77, and he got on famously as they travelled through India while filming the BBC’s The Real Marigold Hotel.
He said: “Me and Britt had a laugh rolling around testing out a bed together on a train ride. I said, ‘Are you going to join me on the top bunk, Britt?’
“She said, ‘No darling, I’m quite happy on my own up here thanks’.”
John doesn’t fancy dating a former Bond girl? He said: “Well, Britt says she’s not dating at the moment. And I think she might have been more interested in Duncan Bannatyne.”
If John does find someone who ticks all his boxes, dates will be a treat.
He said: “Something I’ve learned over the years is to listen to the other person and not talk about yourself all the time. I’d open the door for a lady, pull her chair out and obviously foot the bill.
“Hopefully I’d make them laugh a little with a few anecdotes.”
Many of John’s stories are jawdropping. There was the time in his teens when he visited an opium den in India, threw up outside and was so broke he sold his blood for food.
Or the month he spent in a Belgian jail for drug smuggling – although he was never charged and assures me: “They made a mistake, the dope wasn’t mine.”
Then there were his party-hard years, when he took everything from marijuana and cocaine to LSD and, once “by accident”, heroin. But he feels booze caused the most destruction in his life.
At the height of his alcohol addiction, his wife of 11 years, Bridget Pouhan, and daughter Rosanna left. John has not touched a drink for 23 years.
Rosanna, 33, now lives in Luxembourg and John looks forward to reading his six-year-old granddaughter Lily her Famous Five bedtime stories over Zoom.
“I can’t wait to see Rosanna and cuddle Lily again,” he said. “Cuddling the screen is not the same.”
Another woman he misses is Albert Square legend June Brown. She played his long-suffering, chain-smoking mum Dot for 35 years before shocking fans with an abrupt departure in February.
His character caused hers a lifetime of pain. In real life, John and June are touchingly friendly. John said: “We’re
very close and June doesn’t live too far away from me but I can’t see her at the moment because she can’t go out.
“She’s 93, so her age puts her at high risk. She’s had pneumonia too. And she still smokes, bless her.
“When I gave up 16 years ago, I was on patches. But instead of a 30-a-day patch, I was on an 80-a-day patch and felt like I was going to explode.
“I went round to June’s and she said, ‘Oh dear, you’re so tense since you gave up the cigarettes. I think you should take it up again, I really do.’
“She’s said that a few times. Sound advice from my dear old Ma.”
John believes June is happier since leaving the soap. But he is not convinced she has left for good. He said: “Last I spoke to June, it was doubtful she’d ever go back.
“But you never know. Maybe if they offered her something really exciting…”
He says one reason for her leaving was the introduction of Milly Zero to be her granddaughter Dotty – originally played by Molly Conlin.
“June was quite upset they didn’t bring Molly back. I couldn’t see any reason why they didn’t, you’d have to ask the BBC. She’s a very good actress.
“I don’t know the new actress, I know she’s also good. But I thought bringing in a new Dotty when they already had one was daft. Naturally, June wasn’t pleased.”
John said he was also unhappy at how his lines were cleaned up by the BBC the last time he went back – before he was killed off in 2015 by a heroin overdose. When an original line was switched from using a racist word, he felt it wasn’t what a psychopath like Nick would have said.
“If they’d let Nick say it, maybe more people would have realised it was wrong to use such expressions.
“Producers are trying to pretend racism doesn’t go on but I’m sad and sorry to say it does.”
For a long time, John was angry at being typecast by his time in EastEnders but he has recently mellowed.
That’s not to say he still tunes into the soap that made him a household name. He admitted: “Do you know, I don’t watch it. I’ve actually been caught up in Coronation Street with the Geoff and Yasmeen storyline.
“I got really hooked on it just to see Geoff get his comeuppance. It proves the power of soaps.”
John begins each lockdown day with meditation and a prayer.
While coronavirus scuppered plans to shoot a video for his single Hallucinating You, he has been busy on an album, Never Too Late to Rock
’n’ Roll. He has also recorded his autobiography, In the Nick of Time, for a summer release. As he did so, he reflected on his life, which is largely free of regret. Except, that is, when it comes to the late Leslie Grantham, who played Dirty Den in EastEnders.
“I try not to be regretful,” said John. “We’ve all made mistakes in our lives.
“I don’t regret having a drink, because I had a great time. I don’t regret my time in prison because it was an important lesson, I learned it wasn’t a place I wanted to go back to.
“Maybe my biggest regret is the car Leslie Grantham sold me. I spent hundreds on it, it kept breaking down.
“It was my first car, a BMW. I went for a bog standard Astra after that.”
Hopefully I’d make them laugh a little too with a few anecdotes
JOHN ALTMAN ON HIS HOPES FOR FINDING LOVE