Pattie Coldwell

THE TRADEMARK of the television presenter and broadcaster Pattie Coldwell, best remembered for series such as the daily phone-in Open Air, which she hosted with Eamonn Holmes, was her distinctive Lancashire accent, gravelly voice and outspoken manner.

Pattie Coldwell, television and radio presenter: born Clitheroe, Lancashire 14 May 1952; twice married (one daughter); died Newbury, Berkshire 17 October 2002.

The trademark of the television presenter and broadcaster Pattie Coldwell, best remembered for series such as the daily phone-in Open Air, which she hosted with Eamonn Holmes, was her distinctive Lancashire accent, gravelly voice and outspoken manner.

The documentary-maker Michael Wood, her one-time partner, recalled first seeing her on the regional news programme Granada Reports in Manchester:

I saw this unbelievable scene where what I took to be a middle-aged Lancashire housewife was interviewing Tom Petty, the American rock star.

She had a voice like a buzzsaw and sounded like she smoked 500 cigarettes a day. I remember heaving with laughter thinking how clever they were at Granada to haul this woman from the back streets of Salford and put her on the screen – although I felt they had gone too far this time.

In fact, Coldwell had been born in the Lancashire town of Clitheroe in 1952 and was in her mid-twenties by the time she was a reporter and presenter with Granada Television. (Wood was then working for the rival BBC in Manchester, first as a reporter, then as assistant producer on current affairs programmes. He and Coldwell enjoyed a 10-year relationship and he went on to find acclaim for his historical documentaries.)

Regional television made Coldwell a well-known personality in the North-west, but the rest of Britain seemed unready for her when she became a presenter of the BBC Radio 4 consumer programme You and Yours. Complaints flooded in. "I laughed at the first 500 letters", recalled Coldwell. "Then I started wiping the smile off my face."

After appearing as one of the main hosts on the nightly television magazine show Nationwide, which brought together presenters and stories from the BBC's regional studios around the country, Coldwell landed the job on Open Air, a programme from Manchester that helped to launch the BBC's new daytime schedules. Together, Holmes and Coldwell listened to viewers calling in with their thoughts on the previous evening's television and other topics. Then, she made the ITV consumer series Out of Order, as well as the BBC home-makeover programme On the House.

Her documentary Remembering Terry (1988), in which the actor Terry Madeley became the first Aids sufferer to talk on television, won an award from the Terrence Higgins Trust and was an early example of a programme that aimed to convey understanding of the illness. It was screened shortly after his death.

Coldwell also hosted the regional ITV programmes Capital Woman for Carlton Television and Doing It Up, a DIY house-renovation series, for Meridian, before returning to national television as a presenter of the consumer series Espresso (1997), on the newly launched Channel 5. Last year, she was on the team of presenters for ITV1's daytime show Live Talk (2001) and most recently appeared in its series Loose Women (2002).

Following the launch of BBC Radio 5, subsequently renamed Radio 5 Live, she hosted its live, late-night discussion programmes Night Talk and After Hours.

After her relationship with Michael Wood broke up, Coldwell married Tony Kerner, who was a reporter on Out of Order and a fellow presenter on Espresso. Earlier this year, following their divorce, she married Evan, a fisherman whom she met on the Caribbean island of Bequia in 1998. She always refused to reveal his full name.

Coldwell twice fought back from breast cancer, after being diagnosed in 1997 and 1998, but in June this year was told that she had brain tumours and the cancer had spread to her lungs and liver.

During her final months, Coldwell told movingly of how she lived with terminal cancer in a column in the Daily Express. Last week, she wrote:

I went to bed in a sulk and found myself riveted to a documentary about Thalidomide 40 years on. The drug was given to pregnant women to stop morning sickness. The tragic outcome was that several hundred children were born without arms and legs – and I think I've got problems. . .

Many have developed successful careers. . . One's a club entertainer who brought the house down when he boasted about getting to the front of the queue at Homebase on a Bank Holiday weekend with his mobility sticker. It's wonderful to see barriers broken down about disability through laughter. It brought me back to realising how lucky I am.

Anthony Hayward