became obvious that he did intend to kill his mother, as he was shown practising a fake suicide note in Dot's handwriting – a foil to cover the intended murder; according to Brake, Dot remained blithely and perhaps purposefully ignorant to his wrongdoing. The episode which culminated the storyline, written by P.J. Hammond, was set solely in Dot's house and featured an unusually small cast consisting of Nick, Dot, Nick's estranged father Charlie, Dot's close friend Ethel Skinner and Alistair the fake priest. At the last moment, in what Altman has called the "one time we saw a glimmer of Nick's good side", Nick backed out of his plan and stopped Dot from eating the poisoned meal he had intended to kill her with. Once again Dot was left alone, broken-hearted at what her own son had been prepared to do to her. Other storylines have concentrated on Dot's various attempts to reform Nick, such as in 1991, when Nick returned with a heroin addiction. As the plot unfolded, Dot tried to curtail Nick's addiction by locking him in his room and forcing him to go cold turkey. His resulting paranoia and cravings led him to escape and murder the first person he encountered, The Queen Victoria landlord Eddie Royle (Michael Melia). The episode where Eddie was murdered was the big autumn launch episode for 1991. Nick stood trial in January 1993; however, "he got away with murder" for a second time in the serial. Other scams have included Nick's attempt to con Dot by claiming he had AIDS in 1998 after escaping from prison, which ultimately led to Dot having him re-imprisoned. Then followed a plot that saw him largely responsible for the death of his son Ashley (Frankie Fitzgerald) in June 2001, ultimately leading Dot to disown Nick and prompting to leave the Square again. He is not seen for more than seven years after this, although he was mentioned in 2006 when recovering from cancer off-screen. Following pleas from Brown to resurrect Nick, John Altman returned to the serial again in December 2008, in a storyline that saw Nick attempt to con Dot again, this time aided by a previously unheard of daughter, Dotty (Molly Conlin), who was born in 2002 after Nick's previous exit. Altman explained: "Nick needed something, because I think if he didn't have little Dotty, for him to walk through that door, she