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Lynda Bellingham final Loose Women appearance moves audience to tears as actress wishes for one last Christmas

'Bloody right I am! I am. I AM,' the late actress said when asked about her obsession with the festive season by fellow Loose Woman Coleen Nolan

Jenn Selby
Wednesday 22 October 2014 14:42 BST
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Lynda Bellingham moved her colleagues to tears and her audience to perform a standing ovation during her last ever appearance on ITV show Loose Women.

The show was recorded on 8 October - a week before she died after a year-long battle with colon cancer - but broadcast today.

Watched on by her husband Michael Pattemore, she spoke of her desire to spend one final Christmas with her family, with a "real tree" and "pudding and presents" at home.

Asked on the subject of being obsessed by Christmas by her co-presenters Janet Street Porter and Coleen Nolan, she said: "Bloody right I am! I am. I AM."

On what she had planned for 25 December, Bellingham responded:

"Well I've succumbed to not cooking [Christmas dinner].

"I thought poor Michael, you can't put him through that again. So we're going to go to the hotel and have the meal but just for a little bit of control we're going to open home for pudding and presents.

"My only problem is getting the presents - my sister Jean has been absolutely amazing and I keep sending him (Michael) out for bizarre things."

"He's spent years trying to put me off a real tree," she said, gesturing to Pattemore. "And we're very lucky as we live in a converted psychiatric hospital which has got a really tall ceiling.

"All I've ever wanted is a real tree.

"'No don't make me sweep up the pine needles, oh my goodness'," she quipped, mimicking her husband.

"Hey I'm getting one, I'm getting a real tree. He'll just have to struggle out of the window with it afterwards, that's fine."

Later on in the interview, the actress famed for her role as the homely British mother of the OXO adverts, expressed how she wished to be remembered.

"Just as an honest person," she said. "Honesty. We've been through this as Loose Women - you can't do Loose Women unless you're honest.

"You can't hide anything, it really is honest when we answer questions. That's why I felt I could write about it and people would trust.

"Trust is a huge thing. Not just as an actor, not just as a lover, not just as a wife, that trust thing. Just to say you could trust her. As you know I wanted to win an Oscar at 75 for Best Newcomer! Sadly that's gone out of the window."

At one point, Bellingham reached out to comfort a tearful Nolan, telling her: "Please don’t cry... It will be fine!"

Since her death, a Facebook campaign to reinstate her famed OXO advert in time for Christmas so that even after her passing, she could still spend one final festive season with the nation on television.

So far,the main campaign page has attracted over 130,000 likes.

Bellingham revealed last month that she planned to end her chemotherapy for colon cancer, which she has been battling since July 2013.

"Lynda died peacefully in her husband's arms yesterday at a London hospital," a statement from her agent Sue Latimer read.

"Her family would like to thank the nurses and staff for their tremendous care and support.

"Actor, writer and presenter - to the end Lynda was a consummate professional."

"I just want her to be remembered as an actress more than anything - not as a celebrity or one of the Loose Women," Pattemore wrote about Bellingham in his column for Your magazine yesterday.

"She started her career as an actress and never thought of herself as a celebrity. She's always been an actress."

"She was in too much pain and they didn't have it under control enough for me to be able to look after her," he said.

"I can tell you now that the words on her gravestone will be 'The curtain went up on May 31 1948, and the final curtain went down on October 19 2014'."

Simon Pegg, Ed Miliband and fellow Loose Women panelists were among high-profile names to pay tribute yesterday. Pegg described Bellingham as his first "tv mother figure and a treasured friend[sic]".

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