Dot Cotton: Spy who loved me... then broke my heart Enders star tells of shock end to teenage romance with dashing secret agent
SUNDAY MIRROR Last picture of parents struck by cancer
EASTENDERS legend June Brown has told of her first love – a dashing Second World War spy who broke her heart.
June, who has played Dot Cotton (now Branning) in the BBC1 soap since 1985, said she fell for Belgian Ralph Latimer in 1940, aged just 14.
But he ended up marrying another woman, she reveals on BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs.
June, who turns 90 on Thursday, said Ralph worked with her father in a yeast factory near their home in Ipswich, Suffolk.
She said: “He had e s c a p ed from Belgium. Father felt sorry for him because he was on his own in digs and he said to Mother, ‘Can he come and stay with us?’ And he became like a brother. And he also had a very good voice.
“And we all used to stand around the piano and he’d sing and we’d sing. And I was very much in love with him. And he told his mother he was going to marry me when I was 16.
“In that time, they decided they would use him in a better fashion, and he was dropped into Belgium to join The Underground. He became a spy.”
She tells how when he came back he was involved with somebody else, who he married, adding: “So that was very sad. I suppose it did break my heart. I was stunned when I realised what had happened.
“We were always writing to each other and the letters just stopped and I didn’t know what happened. And I did actually write and say I’ll be coming up to London. And I’ll be there all day, which I was.
“And apparently his mother came to meet me but I’d just gone to a restaurant. We just missed each other.”
June dedicates one of her eight Desert Island tracks to him – Chanson du coeur brisé (Song of the broken heart), sung by American soprano Christine Brewer.
During June’s frank interview with Kirsty Young – which airs today – she also speaks of her grief at losing loved ones. Her elder sister Marise died in 1934 aged eight, from a meningitis-like illness.
She says it had a profound effect on her. “She was like my mother. We were alw ay s together. I was very lonely. She had always been there.”
June’s first husband, actor Johnny Garley, committed suicide in his 30s – something which didn’t come as a complete surprise to her.
“He was always being put under somebody else (in stage shows) who wasn’t as good as he was, and by this time Johnny had kind of lost heart,” she says. “I used to cry in the car on my own, but I never showed it.”
June also says she will never retire, admitting it’s what “keeps me alive”.
She adds: “I think that’s why many people get ill and lonely when they’re older. I think loneliness and having no motivation – having nothing to work towards – kills you.” THE heartbreaking image of two terminally-ill parents clutching hands and saying a last goodbye to each other has been shared by their devastated children.
Tragically last week, not long after this picture was taken, Mike Bennet, 57, died of a brain tumour and his wife Julie, 50, is in a hospice dying of cancer.
Their local community is rallying round to support their three children – Oliver, 13, Hannah, 18, and Luke, 21. An online appeal has been launched to help keep them in their family home in Irby, Merseyside. Last night it had raised more than £50,000.
Friend Sue Wright said: “I told Julie the community would come together to help look after her kids, and she opened her eyes and smiled.”
Another friend, Heather Heaton Gallagher, said: “Words just cannot express our desperate sadness for such a beautiful family.
“Facing a double terminal cancer diagnosis is beyond belief and, as a community, we are working hard to support the family.”
Eldest son Luke said: “My brother, sister and I are overwhelmed by the enormous support and generosity we have received from so many friends and well-wishers. It gives my mum a great deal of comfort to hear that we are being so well looked after.
“I know it has been her priority to make sure that the three of us can continue as best we can with our studies and fulfil our ambitions.”