A toast to a Style Icon.

Yes.  Dot Cotton.

I’m fascinated by her.  She looks immaculate in everything she wears.  You can throw an ugly tartan skirt, old cardi and a mustard blouse on a normal person, and they’ll look like Well ‘Ard barfed on them.  Put it on Dotty baby?  She’ll look awesome.  Yeah she kind of is an old lady, but she rocks the Old Lady-chic like no other.  Sometimes her outfits are so well colour co-ordinated that my eyes almost bleed from the clash, but she works it.  Her nails are immaculate.  Her hair-do is a phenomenon.  Her voice is a victim of a life-time of smoking, but can you honestly imagine Dot talking in soft, seductive tones?  Hell no.  Bring on that deep bellow.  She’s never seen without a Cigarette (and always looks cool with one). I bet she’s one of those people that will live till she’s 120, and bypass the laws of cancer, but if she stopped smoking…she’d probably stop breathing on the spot.  She can’t know what Oxygen is even like.  Her cheeks are permanently sucked in from all the inhaling she does.  I bet she’s actually only 25 in real life.

Let’s have a few more photos of her:

But get this. She’s even cooler in real life!

Hi Basin of love!  She’s 81!  I need to adopt her as my grandmother.  Now.

Oh and her on-screen son has just come back in Eastenders.  NICK COTTON ALERT!  I’m thrilled!  He may be a little past it now, but just LOOK at how cool he was:

Sadly this is the only picture online of him in the 80s era, when he was skinny, and all evil in his cross earring and his army boots and skinny jeans.  I LOVE all the baddies in Eastenders.  Apart from Phil Mitchell.  He belongs on a spitroast with an apple in his mouth.

‘I’m a bad boy, Ma…’

Tags: Dot Cotton, Eastenders, Nast Nick, Nick Cotton