BBC Radio 4 presenter Sarah Montague issued an apology after EastEnders actor John Altman used a racial slur during a live broadcast.
While discussing his iconic role as villain Nick Cotton, Montague asked Altman if he had ever improvised lines ahead of the soap’s 40th anniversary.
Reflecting on scenes with his on-screen mother, Dot Cotton, played by June Brown, he responded: “During the early days with June it was really flexible. You didn’t have to ask permission to have a cigarette. You could just do it. June and I used to improvise…
“We knew our characters so well. We wouldn’t change it drastically. We’d put in words or a line here and there to make it comical. Just to liven it up a bit.”
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Altman, who appeared in EastEnders’ very first episode in 1985, went on to discuss how filming had changed when he returned to the show in the late 2000s, recalling how producers altered a racial slur in the script to “illegal immigrant.”
Speaking on the show on Wednesday, he recalled: “I suppose I can say it on air, if you don’t mind, but Nick referred to someone who was living with Dot as a p**i. They start filming and they said, ‘Oh I don’t think we can say that’.
Quickly interrupting the actor, Montague said: “No, I don’t think we can [say that].”
The screen star then claimed that “people do unfortunately still say it these days”, to which she stated “they don’t”.
Altman then continued: “They changed it to illegal immigrant so this is just an example of what happened with the script.
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“They just went with that line rather than the previous one.”
Later in the episode, the presenter issued an apology for the language used during the interview, saying: “Can I apologise. It wasn’t appropriate in the old days, and it wasn’t appropriate now, for what John Altman said.”
The slur has since been removed from the BBC website.
Altman appeared in EastEnders’ debut episode, with his character playing a key role in the soap’s first major storyline—the murder of elderly resident Reg Cox (Johnnie Clayton).
He quickly became the show’s ultimate villain, portraying a drug user, antagonist, and murderer. He initially left the soap in 1991 after rejecting a planned gay storyline for his character, arguing it conflicted with Nick’s original portrayal as straight.
However, the actor made multiple returns, appearing in 1993, 1998, 2000-2001, 2008-2009, and finally from 2014 to 2015.
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Throughout his time on EastEnders, Nick was at the center of some of its darkest plots, including the murder of Eddie Royle (Michael Melia), repeated attempts to kill his mother Dot, and accidentally causing his son Ashley’s (Frankie Fitzgerald) death by tampering with a motorbike.
Nick’s final exit in 2015 saw him die from a fatal heroin overdose, cradled in his mother’s arms as Dot chose not to call for help.
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