AS landlady Angie Watts, actress Anita Dobson was the self-proclaimed ‘queen’ of The Queen Vic in EastEnders. But she could have ended 2025 with yet another crown as Queen of the Jungle.

ITV chiefs wanted her to sign for I’m A Celebrity and join the likes of Angry Ginge, Aitch, Kelly Brook and fellow Albert Square favourite Shona McGarty in the Australian camp. However, Anita turned the offer down.

 

 

She revealed: “They did ask me and I said No. I would never. There is not enough money in the world to make me go on that programme. It’s having to eat and do all those stupid things and being stuck with the same people all the time that you didn’t choose to go on holiday with. No. I couldn’t do it.”

It is a shame because it would have topped a very exciting year for the 76-year-old actress. She not only reprised her iconic role as the late Angie Watts in the special 40 th anniversary episode of EastEnders back in February – appearing in a surprise vision to her daughter Sharon (Letitia Dean). But her character of Mrs Flood caused huge excitement among Doctor Who fans when she was unveiled as the legendary villain The Rani in the BBC One sci-fi series in May.

Anita admits she is good at keeping secrets as she couldn’t tell a soul (apart from her husband and Queen guitarist Brian May) about what she was up to. And it’s something she is going to have to do in 2026 as she has another role coming up in a show but she cannot talk about it.

The star confided: “The thing is that everybody tells you to keep quiet. I had to keep so many secrets last year. It’s been ridiculous but I have got something coming up. I have got a part. It’s not like Mrs Flood (in Doctor Who) but it’s popping in and out of a series.”

Believe it or not, but telly favourite Anita, who was born in Stepney in east London, has actually been acting since she was four years old. But she insists she didn’t choose acting, it chose her. She disclosed: “It wasn’t really me that decided to be an actress, it was decided for me. I was four years old and I got taken to a pantomime in Hackney with my grandfather and my mother and apparently I did the whole show with the actors on stage. It must have been really annoying for them and then I went home and did the whole show again for my family. My grandfather said to my mum ‘You wanna watch her. She has got the sawdust in her blood’. And this was at four years old.”

After training at The Webber Douglas Academy of Performing Arts in London, she landed her first acting role in a Christmas show called The Saga Of Sir Sing-a-Lot. And she laughs: “And he did!

“The show was done up north and it was so cold and I didn’t know anybody and it was long hours and it wasn’t a particularly happy company as we had problems with various things and I thought I am never going to hack this. So I rang home and said to my dad ‘I wanna come home’ and he said ‘If you get through this one then everything else will be plain sailing’. And he was right.”

Anita landed presenting work on the children’s show PlayAway and then acting roles in the The Nanny and Partners In Crime and even the Jim Davidson comedy Up The Elephant and Round The Castle. But in 1985 she became a household name when she landed the part of Angie Watts in EastEnders – a role she would play for three years.

The Christmas special in 1986 where her cheating husband ‘Dirty’ Den (the late Leslie Grantham) served her with divorce papers notched up a record audience of 30 million viewers. She still has fond memories of the soap and its cast adding: “A lot of the people who were in it back in the old days have either left or passed on but I remember I loved playing Ange so much. I loved having that family with Lesley and Letitia. That was a gift.

“The scripts were so good in those early days. We didn’t have to think … we just were it! It was wonderful. We were a happy family. And the wonderful thing about the East End is that we had a sense of humour so when things went wrong we tend to try to laugh about it no matter how horrible it is and I think those early scripts capture that.”

It was during 1986 that she met Queen star Brian May and she got to know his fellow band members including the late Freddie Mercury very well. She and Brian married in 2000.