Dame Esther: It’s a miracle
DAME Esther Rantzen received her Covid jab yesterday – declaring it a “miracle”.
The veteran campaigner, 80, who has spent the past 10 months in isolation, will have a follow- up injection in January and hopes to be reunited with her family by February.
She urged her fellow octogenarians to take up the priority jab and said: “I feel so grateful to the dedicated scientists who invented it and the dedicated NHS who deliver it to us. It’s a miracle.”
Dame Esther is known to millions as the presenter of That’s Life! which ran for 21 years and drew audiences of 18 million, and as a campaigner who set up ChildLine in 1986 and The Silver Line for lonely pensioners in 2013.
She has three children Miriam, Rebecca and Joshua from her marriage to the late Desmond Wilcox and says the most painful part of the pandemic has been the forced separation from her five grandchildren and her friends.
After her injection at Milford War Memorial Hospital in Lymington, she said: “To hear the joy in my children’s voices when I rang to tell them I’d been given my appointment was the best present. There really is a light at the end of this long, dark tunnel.”
TODAY we carry exclusive pictures of Dame Esther Rantzen having her coronavirus jab. The former presenter of That’s Life! and campaigner on issues for pensioners has been sceptical about the vaccine so it is a big moment for her to be photographed having it.
This should give confidence for others to have the injection and allow them and the whole country to face a brighter year in 2021 rid of the pandemic.