An enduring friendship featured in "EastEnders" was the one shared between the characters Dot Cotton and Ethel Skinner (played by Gretchen Franklin), first shown on-screen in 1985 and ending with Ethel's death in 2000, though the characters shared a backstory set prior to 1985 and were scripted as neighbours who grew old together in East London, along with Lou Beale (Anna Wing). "BBC News" has described Dot and Ethel as an "incomparable double-act [...] Occasionally spiky and often hilarious". Dot and Ethel shared few similarities in personality. During an episode that aired in 2008, just under 8 years after Ethel died in the serial, Dot discussed the differences between them: "Ethel was a free spirit, not like me. All bottled up. I remember sitting on the step of the Vic, waiting for me mother. I caught a glimpse of her through the door. Sitting on top of the piano, her legs spread, showing next week's washing and bawling out "Roll Out the Barrel". Just like a navvy. She didn't seem to have a care in the world. I had enough for both of us. I loved Ethel." Critic for "The Guardian", Nancy Banks-Smith, discussed the characters' relationship in 2008, comparing them to the girls written about by Dylan Thomas: "There was always one pretty and pert and always one in glasses [Dot." Banks-Smith adds that theirs was "a symbiotic relationship in which the pretty one looks even prettier by contrast and the plain one is popular by proxy. Which is not to say it is not a real and enduring friendship."