Popular TV actress and Loose Women panellist Lynda Bellingham has announced that she is preparing to die.
Lynda, 66, was diagnosed with colon cancer in July 2013 but has been told that the cancer has spread to her lungs and liver and has decided to stop chemotherapy in November.
“Gradually I became the face at the window looking in on a life I once knew,” Lynda reveals in "Memoir", her journal of her battle against the disease, serialised in The Mail on Sunday and to be published on October 9.
By August this year Lynda’s health was deteriorating rapidly. The cancer had spread and, in her own words, “the chemo was getting to me”.
“I sat down with [husband] Michael and [consultant] Professor Stebbing and announced: 'The time has come to cease and desist’.”
Lynda, who has two grown-up sons, continues in her journal: “I would love to make one more Christmas, if possible, but I want to stop taking chemo around November in order to pass away by the end of January.”
Lynda’s many acting roles include Faith Greyshot in the comedies Second Thoughts and Faith in the Future, the Inquisitor in Doctor Who: The Trial of a Time Lord and villainess Irene Radford in The Bill. But it’s as Mum in the Oxo adverts that she has always been best remembered.
“Please don’t think I am giving up," Lynda continues. "It is the fact my body has started to rot and I promised myself as soon as that happened I would make a plan. I want my family to remember me whole.
“I want you all to remember me.”
