He said: “Just want to give a shout-out to my EastEnders family over there. I love you, I miss you – bring Mick back!”
The crowd cheered, after which he asked his co-presenter: “Do you think they should bring Mick back, Katherine?” – to which Parkinson simply asked: “Who?”
Dyer left his role as Mick Carter on EastEnders at the end of 2022, and while this may be nothing more than a funny skit at the NTAs for now, the crowd reaction certainly revealed a huge appetite for Mick to return.
Back in June, Dyer confirmed that he felt his character was dead following his dramatic exit, adding: “Look, I take it as a compliment that people want me to go back.
“Who knows? If there’s no closure there, then maybe I would come back for a dream sequence. I don’t think Mick could just rock up covered in seaweed!”
However, he did say that he could imagine returning for the soap’s 40th anniversary as part of a sequence in which Linda is “drunk or hallucinating”, just so he could do a scene with Kellie Bright, and so that it would “stop people asking me when I’m f**king going back”.
While promoting his comedy show Mr Bigstuff, which has recently been renewed for a second season, Dyer also said that he “needed to leave” EastEnders, and that Mr Bigstuff “cemented that I’d made the right decision”.
“People said, ‘Oh he’ll be back, he won’t get more work’,” he said. “How wrong were they?”
EastEnders airs Monday to Thursday at 7:30pm on BBC One and from 6am on BBC iPlayer.
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