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Sunday 28 September 2014

'I have only weeks left to live. So I've picked the date I will die... just after Christmas': Much-loved actress Lynda Bellingham reveals the story of her 14-month cancer battle

LyndaActress Lynda Bellingham, 66, (left) was diagnosed with colon cancer in June last year and, after receiving several bouts of chemotherapy, is now coming to terms with having just weeks left to live. The former Loose Women panellist, who is also well known for starring in the OXO adverts (right) plans to stop the chemotherapy sessions in November and hopes to spend one last Christmas with her family. She is now trying to spend as much time with her husband Michael Pattemore (pictured together on their wedding day, top) and her children.

Cancer, what do you mean cancer?’ I asked in amazement. The pleasant gentleman in front of me visibly crumpled. He stared at his computer then seemed to pull himself up and looked me straight in the eye.
‘I am so terribly sorry, I thought you had already been informed of your position. You have cancer of the colon, and lesions on your lungs and your liver.’
It was July 2013, and I felt nothing except disbelief.
Me? Cancer? Never.

I was suddenly aware of Michael, my dear, darling husband, sobbing in the chair next to me. I switched into actress mode.
The surgeon sitting in front of us looked uncomfortable and said: ‘The point is, Lynda, we need to get on and do something about your state of health pretty quickly.’
Back out on Harley Street, lined with gorgeous rows of elegant houses and glossy front doors, we held each other and tried to stop the tears from flowing. All around us people were hurrying to and fro and horns blared. Life goes on.
We bowed our heads and turned into each other as though protecting ourselves from a storm.
June-July 2013
Just the month before, I had received the news I had been waiting for. I wanted people to appreciate my talents beyond Oxo gravy or being a Loose Woman, as I had really struggled over the past couple of years to persuade anyone in TV to give me a break. The answer was always the same: ‘It’s difficult to get away from that image and be taken seriously.’
Television did not seem to beckon so I looked to the stage, and there was [producer] David Pugh one day, sitting in the alleyway outside Sheekey’s restaurant in Covent Garden, with a fantastic suggestion.
 


He still owned the rights to A Passionate Woman by Kay Mellor and this would be the play to set me back on course.
It is a brilliant piece of writing, a very dark comedy about a woman in her late 50s on the day her son is getting married. 
She is in a loveless marriage, and the thought of life stretching before her without her beloved son produces some surprising reactions from her and everybody around her. I was so excited about this production.
I had an action-packed day when we auditioned five Polish actors to play opposite me. I then had the onerous task of spending a morning snogging five young, handsome Polish actors. I didn’t mention this to hubby at the time!
Lynda married Michael Pattemore in 2008 and now hopes to spend as much time with him and her children
Lynda married Michael Pattemore in 2008 and now hopes to spend as much time with him and her children

As we waved goodbye at the end of the day, and agreed we were all looking forward to the read through in a few weeks’ time, I was on cloud nine. The day of the read through did, indeed, arrive, on June 28, 2013 – a day I will never forget.
I had been quite ill the Christmas before and Michael had taken me to A&E. I had been having really bad indigestion and then diarrhoea quite badly, and I was short of breath.
We finally saw a doctor who said that it was probably nothing and to take Omeprazole for a couple of weeks. I did, and everything seemed to clear up.
On the morning of the read through I had been told there was a problem with a shadow on my liver, and that I must cancel my holiday to Greece, starting that Sunday, and go and see a colon specialist on the Tuesday.
The day finally came and those unforgettable words resounded round the surgeon’s office – ‘Now about your cancer Miss Bellingham,’ and, well, you know the rest by now.
With A Passionate Woman I had finally found a project that was exciting and would set me off again on the road to acting glory! I joke, but believe me, acting is a very tough and cruel business to survive in, and I intended to survive to my dying day.
Yet now suddenly, ironically, I faced my dying day, and I was going to have to give up my dream.
Lynda, who was a panellist on Loose Women and starred in the OXO adverts in the 1980s, has weeks to live
Lynda, who was a panellist on Loose Women and starred in the OXO adverts in the 1980s, has weeks to live
July-September 2013
We are due to see the oncologist. I look around the quiet waiting room and everywhere there is evidence of this dreadful disease. Heads shaved or covered in colourful scarves. Faces drawn and hollow. Others sitting alone, erect and defiant. I feel just empty and disbelieving.
When my turn comes, Professor Justin Stebbing says it seems likely I’ve had the tumour for at least 18 months.
Instead of operating he thinks I need to start the chemotherapy as soon as possible as there are secondaries on the lungs and the liver.
I have this huge lump in my throat and a desire to burst into tears, but do not want to be embarrassing.
He explains he is going to blast me with the strongest chemotherapy they have, a mixture of Avastin and Oxaliplatin and the fabulous fluorouracil, also gloriously known as ‘FU2’. How wonderful is that? From that moment on I christen my cancer FU2.
The routine for my treatment is pretty much the same each fortnight. I arrive at the London Oncology Clinic with my sample of wee and sit in a lovely chair which goes up and down and round and round and I am hooked up to my drip. Then they flush you out with something ready for the first cocktail.
The actress (pictured in 2010) has received several sessions of chemotherapy since June last year
The actress (pictured in 2010) has received several sessions of chemotherapy since June last year
The fluorouracil comes in the form of a transparent rubber ball, which sits neatly into a blue purse on a belt. The chemo is automatically fed from this ball over the next 48 hours, so I am free to go home.
Come Sunday morning, a lovely BUPA nurse pays a visit and removes the remains of the ball, so that I am free once more. The extraordinary thing is that on chemo weekends I have so much energy because of the steroids and I zip around like a mad thing. The downside is that it is difficult to sleep.
This first weekend is fantastic. I get up as soon as it is daylight and start cooking. The boys all come round for Sunday lunch and we watch Andy Murray win Wimbledon. What a triumph. I’ve been given various pills to take every day and line them up on the kitchen counter. What a palaver. I have anti-sickness pills, painkillers, indigestion pills, blood pressure pills…
Two days after chemo I have to take an injection for the white blood cells. The side effect is three days of flu-like symptoms. By the second session I have started to develop pins and needles in the tips of my fingers and toes. It’s not unpleasant but distracting.
The skin on my hands and fingers is starting to peel, and by the end of my third session I have no ridges to my fingers and the fingerprint recognition feature on my laptop no longer recognises me.
The worst effect is that for a day after chemo, it is as though I have a row of razor blades at the back of my throat every time I swallow. It is agonising.
There is also a problem now with cold things. If I take something from the supermarket fridge or freezer I get cold freeze burns. It is like a mission to the North Pole!
It is becoming all too clear that my acting career is nearly at an end. I’m devastated when I realise that I will have to cancel a planned tour of A Passionate Woman – I’d been so excited by the project.
I ask my oncologist if there is any way I can have my chemo sessions at different hospitals around the country when I tour. But I’m clutching at straws, and I know it.
I’m already experiencing fatigue and flu-like symptoms. It would be impossible to hold a performance together night after night.
So that is that. My career is to end, just like that.
Oh, I could maybe do the odd appearance in a TV drama. Or maybe some reality things and documentaries, but as to any more life-changing career roles? I’m stuck with the part of cancer victim. To live without working is just unbearable. I have been an actress for 45 years. I am defined by my work, in a way, as so many of us are.
Lynda says she has been in and out of hospital since she was diagnosed but is trying to remain positive
Lynda says she has been in and out of hospital since she was diagnosed but is trying to remain positive

The chemo is really starting to kick in. The pins and needles are very annoying, and bizarrely the bottom of my feet really hurt when I try to stand up.
For the first couple of minutes I’m like a woman of 110.
One Monday, the nurses and the doctor on duty explain that the pain is being caused by the cancer trying to fight back against the chemo, so the therapy must be doing something right.
They remind me that the cancer had been reduced and the tumour in the colon was shrinking. I go home with a real feeling that I will crack this.
November 2013
For some reason the chemo has stopped working, so Justin gives me a different set of chemical goody bags. Another 12 sessions and things are still not improving, though. I now feel very tired all the time and sick after meals. Meals? That is also a joke as my taste buds seem to have disappeared completely. Everything tastes like cardboard.
Gradually I am becoming the face at the window looking in on a life I once knew. But I’m determined not to let the sadness win, and push myself to be social.
Then, just as I seem to have found a sense of calm and pretend normality, once again disaster strikes and I’m back in hospital. The pains in my stomach have become unbearable and my prognosis has now changed dramatically.
I will not be ending my chemotherapy in December as hoped. I’m told I will probably have a couple of weeks over Christmas chemo-free, then I’ll be back into the routine again.
It is made clear to me that I will have to have chemo for the rest of my life to keep the thing at bay.
The actress, who was looking forward to starting in a play when she was diagnosed, starred in Calendar Girls
The actress, who was looking forward to starting in a play when she was diagnosed, starred in Calendar Girls
December 2013

On December 11, I find myself in a wheelchair on my way to hospital – yet again. Suddenly I’m so frightened. That night, and the following night, are horrific.
Strangely enough it might have been better to be in a ward rather than my private room, because I begin to feel like I’ve been abandoned. No one comes for hours. My mind is slow but is still going round in circles.
What is happening to me? The pain hovers on the edge of my consciousness, continually threatening to return. I am terrified.
For the next few days I just hang between waking and sleeping. Poor Michael tells me later he thought I was going to die there and then.
I just want to grit my teeth and get through the night-time hours that stretch ahead, in that dim blue hospital light, waiting. The doctor then came to visit and explained they were going to try to put a stent in to relieve whatever was blocking my colon.
Eventually it is Friday 13th and time to go down for my operation. Friday 13th? It beggars belief!
At 6.30 the porters were pushing me through the automatic doors to the theatre. All Michael could see was a hive of activity the other side. As the doors slowly closed, he was completely alone in the corridor. The silence was terrible.
Later Richard Cohen, the surgeon, told him: ‘I have taken out a huge tumour and I could see all the secondaries in the liver. I have had to add an ileostomy, which is like a colostomy bag but for different functions.’
In fact he had arrived in theatre only just in time as the tumour was literally perforating my colon.
Lynda wants to stop receiving chemo in November
Lynda wants to stop receiving chemo in November
How long do you think she has got?’ asks my dear hubby.
‘Two probably, that is about the norm.’
‘Is that days, or months, or what?’ says Michael.
‘No, years,’ replies Richard.
‘Oh right,’ Michael nods. ‘Right, I can live with that. Thank you so much, Richard.’
And he gives the man a hug.
April-May 2014
Does one choose a funeral with hymns and prayers that suit only the deceased? Surely part of the mourning process is for the loved ones left behind? Should they not be allowed some say?
Michael thinks it would be great for our friend Peter Delaney, the vicar who married us, to come down to Somerset – Michael’s old stomping ground and a place we love – and conduct the service there.
‘I wouldn’t expect everyone to have to come all the way down here to pay their respects,’ I say. ‘I want a tribute, or something that is nice and handy, and anyone who fancies coming in and saying goodbye can do so easily, not have to get on a train for three hours.’ We have reached a compromise, I think, and there will be a service in Somerset and a knees-up in London.
So if you are passing, do drop in for a quick boogie.
August 2014
It is another fragrant summer’s day and I just cannot believe I am going to die soon. This whole year has been surreal.
The time allotted for most people with this stage of cancer is two years and I have already got halfway, which is great. I really am in a good place, all things considered, but yet, as I write this, I feel like screaming with the frustration of it all.
Very slowly, in the past couple of weeks, the effects of the chemo are getting to me more than they have before. My mouth is full of ulcers, so apart from the fact I can’t taste most food any more, I now can’t eat anything because it is so sore.
 Just as I seem to have found a sense of calm and pretend normality, once again disaster strikes and I’m back in hospital.
I’m also suffering from thrush in the throat, which has made my voice go thin and reedy and that upsets me, because one of the things I have been able to do so far is the odd voiceover.
But I don’t want you all to think I am feeling sorry for myself, I just want to paint an honest picture of how things are progressing. We had a lovely family lunch yesterday and I went to bed full of hope.
Then I woke at three and the darkness took over and I got so frightened. I don’t want to leave my husband Michael, because I know he is going to be so lonely.
I know the children will rally round, but he can be a cantankerous old bugger at times.
I would hope, in a way, that Michael does meet a lovely lady, who could look after him and they could have a loving relationship.
He says he doesn’t ever want that again, and I understand, but things can happen. However, if that lady was on the lookout for a meal ticket, and decided that my sons’ inheritance was of no consequence, I want to know to the best of my ability I have them sorted.
I do recommend that anyone reading this will take note and make a will.
Lynda received an OBE in March this year. She is now facing the prospect of having just a few weeks left to live
Lynda received an OBE in March this year. She is now facing the prospect of having just a few weeks left to live
August 13, 2014

Yesterday was the glorious 12th – a day for us to remember because it is also the day I decided when I will die. I am very dramatic, aren’t I?
I know it is not ultimately my decision, but it is my last vestige of control to sit in front of the oncologist and say when I would like to stop having chemo and let the natural way do its thing.
It has been a rather fast deterioration over the past couple of weeks, and bizarrely it has been the desire to finish this book that has both spurred me on and finished me off.
I am on such strong chemo now that my body is finally protesting.
Because I was in such pain and discomfort I decided to go into the clinic and get some help with the symptoms.
I don’t want you all to think I am feeling sorry for myself, I just want to paint an honest picture.
This is something I have not done all year because I wanted to deal with things by myself. But now the cancer – or rather the chemo – was getting to me. I sat down with Michael and Professor Stebbing and announced: ‘The time has come to cease and desist.
‘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.’
It was such a relief to say the words.
Please don’t think I am giving up for the sake of a few ulcers, 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.
Abridged from Memoir, by Lynda Bellingham, published by Coronet on October 9 at £16.99. For a copy at the special price of £15.30, visit mailbookshop.co.uk before October 5. P&P free for a limited time.

MOCKED, RIDICULED AND - YES, I'M AFRIAD TO SAY - TOUCHED UP IN THE '70S

Enduring star: Lynda posing for a 1970s photoshoot
Enduring star: Lynda posing for a 1970s photoshoot
With the recent inquiries into sexual abuse, I was asked to take part in a programme about life in the 1970s and how much things have changed. I must say, looking back, it is amazing.
I left drama school in 1969, so much of my career was formed from 1970 through to the early 1980s. 
That part of my career saw some good, some bad and even some really bad stuff in the form of my comedy work, which I naively imagined was showing people how versatile I could be when in reality it pitched me into the arms of the ‘tits and arse’ brigade.
Almost every photo of me in a comedy saw me either playing a nurse with big boobs or as the only girl in the programme, always wearing a low cut T-shirt or some such nonsense. 
At that time women were there to be mocked and ridiculed and, yes – I am afraid to say – touched up.
I remember a very famous comic saying to me, ‘Now in this scene I am going to drop a pencil down the front of your dress and then I look for it.’ He then spent a good five minutes basically abusing me. I just stood there, not quite knowing what to do, and then turned to the room and said: ‘How funny was that, then?’
They all looked embarrassed, I am pleased to say. But the line between what was acceptable or not was obviously in a different place back then. 
Of course there are serious questions to be asked about certain people, and obviously there are real sex offenders out there, but some of these cases now, I think, are way over the top. Do we honestly believe that all these young bands say to their groupies: ‘Now, how old are you and does your mother know you are here in my hotel room?’ I don’t think so!
I do blame the parents, because they really do not know where their children are half the time, and they must know that if their daughters go out with not much on they are in a certain amount of danger. I can remember my dear old dad, who was so gentle and shy, telling me to understand the male psyche. 
As he put it: ‘All men have a basic animal instinct that women do not have, and if a man has not seen a woman for some time, or indeed never, as in some cultures, to suddenly be accosted by the sight of legs and thighs and breasts is just too much for them and they attack.’
I think some of the very liberal thinkers among our female society should take this on board. I am not saying any young girl deserves to be raped or abused because of how she dresses, but maybe a little thought and understanding of the opposite sex might not go amiss.
In hindsight: Lynda says she does regret some of the acting jobs she took on in the early stages of her career
In hindsight: Lynda says she does regret some of the acting jobs she took on in the early stages of her career

But back to the 1970s, and I did have quite a few embarrassing moments, especially if there was a bed scene. I always dreaded them. I had one with an actor much older than me and I was playing his mistress and we were supposed to be making mad, passionate love. We both wore knickers but I had no bra on – ‘Intrinsic to the scene, dear’ is what they always told you.
Anyway, the director called action and this dirty old man stuck his hand between my legs. I let out a yell and the director shouted ‘cut’. ‘What on earth is the matter Lynda?’ he asked impatiently. I looked at my co-star, who was smiling at me. Smiling!
‘Nothing, sorry, let’s go again,’ I said as I settled back under the covers.
‘Action,’ cried the director, and with that I grabbed the actor’s crutch and squeezed, hard. It was his turn to let out a yelp and the director called ‘cut’. ‘What the hell is going on here, you two?’ he asked. ‘Nothing,’ we said in unison, and indeed nothing did happen from then on. That is the way to deal with dirty old men.
In the 1970s, every time one had to do a publicity shot it was inevitably a tits and arse number.
Not that I ever took my clothes off for the newspapers, but the photographer would always ask you to undo one more button or stick your chest out.
Fame: Lynda left drama school in 1969 and formed a large part of her career in the 1970s and 80s
Fame: Lynda left drama school in 1969 and formed a large part of her career in the 1970s and 80s
That was humiliating, but in those days it never occurred to me to say no.
I do regret the jobs I took on in those days, and I do wonder how much it affected my career, but it’s too late to think like that now. I should just be grateful I will never be asked again. Mind you, it is only two years ago that I stopped taking my clothes off nightly in Calendar Girls.
Doing it for that show was so liberating though, for all of us, and it was not as if the audience saw anything.
Although, one memorable night in Glasgow, when I had to move upstage to stand at the top of the imaginary hill and encourage the other ladies to strip, I had to take my top off and turn to the audience with my arms strategically crossed over my boobs. 
In order to get into that position, though, with my back to the audience while I got my bra off, I was very exposed to everyone in the wings. 
There were supposed to be rules about no male stagehands backstage during this part, but a huge hairy Glaswegian had somehow managed to creep in, and when I noticed him at the side of the stage he was waving at me and giving me the thumbs up with a huge grin on his face.
I also appeared in a musical in the West End about the life and loves of Toulouse-Lautrec.
One of my roles was as his mistress, Suzanne Valadon, who liked to embarrass Lautrec in front of his mother.
So there was to be this scene where his mother came for tea, and while they were sitting at the table Suzanne would enter, completely naked, and start looking for something on the table, leaning across the mother in a very obvious way.
My poor father, on the opening night, asked my mother to tell him when I was about to come on naked and he just hung his head and closed his eyes! 



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