Actress Lynda Bellingham dies

THE TV actress Lynda Bellingham, best known for playing the mother in the Oxo adverts  and appearing on the lunchtime show, Loose Women, has died.

The 66-year-old actress was diagnosed with colorectal cancer in 2013, but despite her determination to beat the disease, in September 2014, Bellingham confirmed that her cancer had metastasized to her lungs and liver, and that she had ‘months to live’.

The actress chose to stop all chemotherapy treatment last month and had hoped to have one more Christmas with her family.

Her agent Sue Latimer said in a statement that Bellingham had died ‘in her husband’s arms.’

Lynda, who was awarded the OBE in 2014, was born in Montreal but given up for adoption aged four months because she was born out of wedlock. Her adoptive parents moved her to Buckinghamshire and she was educated at Aylesbury High School.

She went on to train at the Central School of Speech and Drama before appearing as a nurse in the 1970s’ ITV soap General Hospital. She went on to star in many films and TV shows and was most famed for her starring role as the mother in a squabbling family in the long-running Oxo TV adverts.

She is survived by two sons from a previous marriage and her husband.