"Hello Ma": two words that can chill or thrill, depending on whether you’re a diehard Nick Cotton fan, or one of the many EastEnders characters he has tried to rob, poison or burn.
Just when Walford residents thought Nasty Nick was dead and buried, the original bad boy of Albert Square is back. No, he’s not really dead. He’s not even a bit dead. The moment his son, Charlie the copper, arrived to break the news of his death to Dot, the clues were blindingly obvious: from dodgy undertaker Les Coker taking a bung to keep something secret to the hastily arranged cremation that laid to rest Dot’s hopes of seeing her beloved son’s body. The signs couldn’t have been any more glaring if the man himself had walked in, all slicked-back hair, sparkling chain and shiny leather jacket. Now Carol Jackson has spoken to him on the phone, his return from the grave is imminent.
But he’s hardly the first soap character to refuse to die …
Dirty Den (EastEnders)
Death: 1989 Comeback: 2003
“Hello Princess.” Not something Sharon ever thought she would hear again when Dennis Watts was shot dead by a gangland criminal hiding his weapon in a bunch of daffodils. Den wasn’t actually languishing in a watery grave after being dumped in Walford Canal, but living it up under an assumed name in Spain. In real life, Leslie Grantham fled to host Fort Boyard with Melinda Messenger, which is pretty much the same thing.
Harold Bishop (Neighbours)
Death: 1991 Comeback: 1996
Neighbours stars don’t die: they go to the Bungle Bungles to find themselves. But sadly Harold Bishop, long-term love of Madge, was swept out to sea and everyone presumed he had drowned. Many a tear was shed as Madge desperately rasped “Harooooold” on the shore as she clutched his trademark specs. “Ted” (as he was known after losing his memory) returned to Erinsborough five years later.
Kim Tate (Emmerdale)
Death: February 1997 Comeback: May 1997
Only a legendary Emmerdale trollop such as Kim would have the baubles to fake her own death by paying a prostitute to drive round the village impersonating her, until she was bumped off by husband Frank. The shock of seeing her rise from the dead mere months later gave long-suffering Frank a heart attack and in true Kim style she used her compact mirror to check he was definitely dead and then nonchalantly powdered her nose.
Bobby Ewing (Dallas)
Death: May 1985 Comeback: 1986
When Bobby’s smoky-eyed fox of a sister-in-law Katherine Wentworth developed a crush on him, she showed her love by mowing him down in her car, leaving his wife Pam grieving. Pam woke one day from her soft focus sleep to the sound of a tinkling piano soundtrack and a shower running. Of course it was Bobby. In a true ridiculo-twist she had dreamed the whole thing, including the storylines of the previous season. Genius plotting, even if it was a little tricky to tie up all those loose ends.
Tina McIntyre (Coronation Street)
Death: May 2014 Comeback: Hours later, but short-lived
It would take a tough woman to survive being hurled off a balcony on to a cold, hard pavement, but there’s no disputing gobby barmaid Tina was hard as nails. As shifty Rob surveyed the dent her bloodied corpse had made on the ground, she groaned to life like a phoenix from the cobbles. If it weren’t for the close proximity of an iron bar, which Rob used to finish her off, she would have made a full-blown comeback. Death is never the end in soapland though, so that door might still swing open one day. Somehow.
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