Jo’s campaign over loneliness continues
Sherlock star Sian Brooke as Natalie Brown, Sheridan Smith as Julie Bushby and Gemma Whelan as Karen Matthews in The Moorside heart” as they had both experienced loneliness when Mrs Cox first left their family home in Yorkshire to go to university at Cambridge.
Kim said: “We would talk late at night about how we missed each other and I would write poetry to express my thoughts and feelings. Having been so very close all our young lives, it was very tough to be apart.”
Labour MP Rachel Reeves, who co-chairs the commission with Conservative Seema Kennedy, said loneliness was a “silent epidemic” with nine million people describing themselves as being lonely all or most of the time.
“This is work that Jo started a year ago,” she said. “She is no longer here to champion the causes she cared so much about.
“It now falls on all of our shoulders – colleagues in Parliament and friends – to take forward Jo’s work.”
She added: “The man who tried to silence Jo has actually done the opposite because more people now are hearing about Jo and the causes she cared so much about. An act of hatred resulted in a huge outpouring of love.”
The launch highlighted findings which suggest loneliness is far more widespread and imposes a greater cost on those affected than previously acknowledged.
Research by the organisations supporting the commission found more than nine million people privately admit they are “always or often lonely”, but two thirds would never confess to having a problem in public. ACTOR Sheridan Smith has struck up a friendship with Dewsbury Moor’s Julie Bushby after playing her in BBC drama The Moorside.
The Cilla star told the Radio Times how she got talking to Julie – a former friend of Karen Matthews – while filming the series on the infamous Dewsbury case.
The pair even stayed up one night chatting about issues close to the heart, Sheridan told the magazine.
She said: “I am still friends with Julie. She’s a great mum and grandmother and, although she doesn’t always let it show, she has a heart of gold.
“There was a really emotional scene I had to play where my character talks about losing her baby boy to cot death. She stayed up all night with me discussing what had happened and how she had coped, just to help me play the scene.”
Sheridan also told how Julie helped her with her fears over her sick father, who died just before Christmas.
She said: “At the time I was so worried about my dad, but I learned a lot from her that night about staying strong for those you love and for that I’ll always be grateful.”
The Moorside chronicles the events leading up to the discovery that Karen Matthews plotted her own daughter’s kidnap in 2008.
It will be screened at 9pm on BBC One on Tuesday, February 7.