EastEnders star Sean Maguire 'begged' BBC bosses not to kill off his beloved character by suicide.
The 45-year-old shot to fame as Tegs Ratcliffe in Grange Hill before he landed the part of Aidan Brosnan on Albert Square in 1993.
Sean has now recalled the time he pleaded with EastEnders bosses not to kill Aidan off during an explosive Christmas Day episode.
Scriptwriters had planned to write the actor out of the show by making his character take his own life in tragic scenes.
Lifting the lid on his character's fate, Sean appeared on Celebrity Catch Up podcast, where he admitted that he felt it was 'completely wrong' for Aidan to be killed off in such a triggering manner.
The former soap star explained: "I got quite a lot of letters from young people, especially young people that were having a tough time, and when they told me the character was going to commit suicide, I said to them, ‘Please don’t.
"'I’m happy to leave in any fashion you want, but please don’t have him commit suicide'. Because inevitably there are suicides around Christmas – sadly sometimes they’re young people and I know that the tabloids will say it’s a copycat death and they copied me or something, that’s possible – and I couldn’t deal with that.
"My conscience couldn’t deal with that. That would break me if I felt in any way responsible for something like that."
Unfortunately, Sean's pleas fell on deaf ears as BBC bosses insisted the suicide was the only way his character was going to die.
Sean went on: "I said, ‘Please find another way. I’m not telling you how to run your show, but please don’t do that. Don’t do that on Christmas Day. It’ll ruin the country’s Christmas'.
"And they were like, ‘No, that’s what we’re doing’. And I was like, ‘OK, well I’ve voiced my opinion'."
However, in a freak twist, fate struck, and Sean became involved in a real-life near-death experience which meant he was unable to film his final scenes on the soap.
The young star escaped death after a horror motorbike accident - but there was a silver lining to the freak ordeal.
"And then as luck, bad luck, would have it, I broke my leg a week or two later in a… I was doing a stupid motorcylce thing that I shouldn’t have been doing," Sean said.
"I broke my leg very, very badly and very nearly killed myself, very nearly actually died in the motorcycle accident, had I hit the wall differently.
"If I’d have hit it with my head I’d be dead for sure, because I hit the wall at about 50mph.
"And because I broke my leg I couldn’t walk and because I couldn’t walk, I couldn’t jump off a building. So fate sort of stepped in and then Aidan just went off back to Ireland or something, I think."
