As she lay dying in my arms I told Lynda I loved her a million times
In this exquisitely moving and heart-rendingly honest interview, Lynda Bellingham’s husband speaks for the f irst time of the agony of losing her
ONE final Christmas with her family was all Lynda Bellingham wanted. Her body ravaged by terminal cancer and all quality of life wrecked by chemotherapy, she’d quite simply had enough. Sitting beside her husband, Michael Pattemore, in the London office of her oncologist, Professor Justin Stebbing, she had just one question: ‘Is it time for me to fall off the twig?’ ‘Not quite yet,’ he said, to which Lynda — told that she’d have eight weeks to live if she stopped chemotherapy — replied decisively: ‘If you can get me to Christmas, I’ll come off the chemo in November.’
Michael Pattemore sobs quietly as he recalls that day in August this year, when his beloved actress wife took control of what was left of her life and chose when to bring down the final curtain.
Lynda wanted her family to remember her how she was — as a vibrant, happy and whole woman in her prime — rather than let them see her ‘die a little sad old lady’.
‘Her quality of life was horrific,’ weeps Michael, 59, in his first interview since Lynda’s death last month. ‘She was in terrible pain and had ulcers in the mouth and all down her throat.
‘Her sparkle had gone. The cancer was killing her, but so was the chemo. She hated what was happening to her and didn’t recognise herself any more.’
Even so, Michael was not ready to let her go. ‘Whoa, hang on a minute, Lynda,’ he interrupted his wife. What if her condition picked up? ‘You’ll carry on, won’t you?’
Struggling to compose himself, Michael continues: ‘ Well, the look on Justin’s face told me everything I needed to know. I was being selfish wanting her to go on. Lynda wanted to die with dignity with everyone remembering her the way she was, so Justin told us he would cut Lynda’s chemo by half to improve her quality of life.
‘Within weeks, the ulcers had gone and the old Lynda was back. She started enjoying life again and asked me: “Can we go on holiday?” She was l ooking f orward to Christmas and, my God, Lynda loved Christmas.
‘Every year she bought a huge tree
‘Is it time for me to fall off the twig?’ she asked
and enough decorations to light up Regent Street. She was a fantastic cook, and she’d lay out the table for a banquet for 25 people.
‘I really thought she’d make it. I even thought that if her quality of life improved, come November she might want to continue with the chemo. But her cancer was so aggressive, she didn’t make it to the end of October.’
Lynda died in Michael’s arms on October 19 at the private London Clinic where she’d received treatment. It was just ten days after the publication of her memoirs, There’s Something I’ve Been Dying To Tell You, in which she revealed for the first time she had terminal bowel cancer.
A trouper to the l ast, Lynda launched the book by putting on a show- stopping display of bravery and — immaculately dressed and made-up — facing the world with immense courage.
With a smile and not an ounce of self-pity, she spoke movingly in interviews of her decision to stop chemotherapy and ‘choose the time of my own death’.
Only Michael knows how much effort that took. Just two weeks after her final TV interview on Loose Women — on which she’d once been a panellist and which sparked an overwhelming outpouring of love — Lynda was in so much pain she was admitted to hospital.
While she slept, a heartbroken Michael sought refuge in a church. Whereas once he’d been desperate to keep her alive, he now cried and prayed to God to end his wife’s suffering.
As she lay in his arms that evening, unable to speak and no longer the Lynda he knew, he told her not to worry. He told her he loved her ‘a million times’.
When she passed away, he kissed her and took her diamond-studded Russian wedding ring from her hand and slipped it onto his little finger, where it now sits next to his own wedding band.
Last week, Michael buried Lynda, poignantly on the tenth anniversary of the day they’d met. He gave her a spectacular send-off, complete with fireworks at the grave-side. Lynda, who died aged 66, loved fireworks almost as much as Christmas.
More than 300 people attended her funeral in Crewkerne, Somerset, where Michael grew up.
It was a star- studded congregation. The mourners i ncluded Michael Redfern, Lynda’s ‘husband’ in the famous Oxo gravy TV adverts, Christopher Timothy, her co-star in All Creatures Great And Small, and her close friend Christopher Biggins — who wore a pink suit.
They were j oined by actors Maureen Lipman, Robert Lindsay, Coronation Street’s Helen Worth, writer and close friend Lynda La Plante and Lynda’s Loose Women co- stars Coleen Nolan, Andrea MacLean, Jane MacDonald and Denise Welch.
With Lynda’s two sons from her previous marriage — actor Michael Peluso, 31, and his younger brother Robert, 26, a hotel guest relations manager — Michael carried Lynda’s mahogany coffin into the church to Elgar’s Nimrod, which Lynda had chosen, and carried her out to her second choice, There’s No Business Like Show Business, from the musical Annie Get Your Gun.
‘When we carried Lynda in, everyone was crying, but when we carried her out everyone was laughing, which is what Lynda would have wanted,’ says Michael.
Today, though, property developer Michael looks utterly bereft. The tears spill as he contemplates Christmas alone.
Their beautiful North London flat now feels eerily cold and quiet without Lynda’s warmth, her throaty laugh and the delicious smell of her cooking — for although she hated to admit it, there was a large chunk of the Oxo Mum within Lynda.
This week it was announced that a 1984 Oxo advert starring Lynda will be screened in her memory on Christmas Day. Premier Foods, which owns the brand, will also be making a donation to the charity Action Against Cancer at her
‘Lynda’s diary is still on the table, full of her plans’
family’s request. Michael is sure Lynda would have been thrilled — even though she felt the ad campaign had marred her acting career — but isn’t sure he can watch it without breaking down.
‘On our last holiday to Corfu in September, Lynda was worried I’d be lonely without her. She said to me: “You should go to Australia after I die to see your step-sister.” She went: “You’ve got your iPad here — let’s book it now.”
‘I said: “Hang on Lynda, have you got a hot-line to God?” She replied: “What do you mean?” and I said: “We don’t know when you’re going to die.” And she said: “Oh yes!” But perhaps she knew the end was closer than I did.
‘The house is so empty without her, and I haven’t stopped crying since she died. I keep expecting her to walk in. Lynda’s handbag is still lying exactly where I put it after she
died. Her diary is still open on the table, filled with her plans for the future. Lynda loved making plans.
‘I can’t believe that just two years ago she was as fit as fiddle. She was in better shape than most women her age, and happier than she’d ever been, and now she’s gone.’
This is the first time Michael — Lynda’s third husband and the man she called Mr Spain after the country where they met — has ever spoken of his relationship with Lynda, one of Britain’s best-loved actresses with a career spanning 45 years.
He wants to thank her fans for their support and let them know how moved she was by their love for her in her final months. Michael was running an estate agency in Spain when he met Lynda in 2004, arranging a mortgage for her best friend who was buying an apartment there.
Lynda, a single mother to her two sons for 12 years, certainly wasn’t looking for a new relationship — her last marriage had been marred by domestic violence, l eaving her traumatised.
But they ‘clicked’, fell in love and married in 2008, looking forward to spending the rest of their lives together.
Lynda seemed in tremendous shape. She’d given up smoking years before and lately alcohol, too. She went for a Well Woman check every year. The stool test — to see if there is blood, an early indicator of bowel cancer — always came back negative.
So when, during a panto season in Bradford two years ago, she started suffering from stomach pains and diarrhoea, she initially dismissed it as a tummy bug.
Michael insisted she visit her private GP in July 2013 after noticing she was becoming breathless while walking on holiday in Italy and cycling during a family trip to Center Parcs. A scan revealed she had a mass in her bowel.
‘Lynda’s first words to the GP were “Have I got cancer?” and he said “I don’t think so”, but he referred her to a Harley Street surgeon,’ says Michael. ‘The first thing the surgeon said to us was: “It’s cancer.”
‘We both went “What?” and burst into tears. He looked at us and said: “Don’t you know?” You could see the look of horror on his face. He thought we already knew.
‘We stumbled out of his office, clinging to each other sobbing.’
They then went to see oncologist Professor Justin Stebbing to discuss what to do next.
‘Justin said: “You can both stop crying. Lynda, I can’t cure your cancer, but I think I can get you to the point where we can control it.” The cancer had already spread to her liver and lungs and Lynda was in a terrible state.
‘She cried: “I don’t want to be a burden. If I’m going to die, let me die now.” It was the actress coming out and Justin said “Stop there”, and spent an hour explaining everything to us. But Lynda was in shock and didn’t take in a bit of it.’
The plan was for Lynda to start chemotherapy i mmediately to shrink the tumours, with a view to removing them when they were under control.
‘For the first three months, everything went like clockwork. Lynda
‘Her sparkle had gone, but to me she was lovely’
had chemo every two weeks and it was all good news with the nurses telling us: “It’s all going the right way,” ’ says Michael.
Lynda had just won a starring role in a play called A Passionate Woman and was desperate to go on tour.
‘ Dying was the l ast thing on Lynda’s mind,’ Michael says. ‘We thought if we got to Christmas, she’d still be able to tour, but then everything plateaued and the chemo stopped doing what it was supposed to.’ Lynda was admitted to the London Clinic at the beginning of l ast December, complaining of stomach pain. Scans revealed that she was dangerously ill.
‘We were told: “If we don’t operate within the hour, she’s gone.” The tumour was perforating her bowel. It was Friday the 13th and I really thought I was going to lose Lynda. I paced the corridor for hours, fearing the worst,’ says Michael.
‘When the surgeon came back, I
took one look at his face and thought “Oh my God, she’s dead”, but he told me: “No, she’s fine.”
‘I asked him then: “How long has she got?” He said: “I reckon two.” And I said: “Two days? Two weeks? Two months?” He replied: “No, two years”; and I thought: “That will do me.”
‘When they brought Lynda to intensive care, she was in a terrible way. I’ve never seen so many tubes. They’d had to remove part of her bowel.
‘She had a stoma bag and she hated that. Lynda felt like a wizened old lady, but to me she was still as lovely as ever — beautiful inside and out.
‘For the first time since her diagnosis, she looked genuinely terrified. She thought she was dying, so when I told her “The good news is, you have another two years”, she breathed a sigh of relief and said: “Let’s make those two years the happiest two years of our life.” ’ Lynda wanted to keep her cancer private, but having been forced to pull out of A Passionate Woman, a public announcement had to be made. She refused to reveal the exact nature of her cancer, not wanting the armchair experts to write her off prematurely. She wanted to tell her story in her own words, and to date her memoirs have sold more than 150,000 copies.
Each round of chemotherapy, however, became ever more
‘I’d rather have gone to jail than let her suffer’
debilitating. The skin on her fingers wore away and ulcers in her mouth made it difficult to eat and swallow. Even her voice was affected. Distraught at the sudden loss of her 45-year acting career, she turned to writing her second novel — The Boy I Love — which is published next week.
‘I’d come home from work to find Lynda slumped over her computer, asleep, and think: “Oh my God, she’s dead!” ’ Michael says. ‘Her quality of life was simply terrible and I felt I was losing the Lynda I knew.’
Throughout their relationship, the pair had talked about death. Both agreed they’d prefer to be put out of their misery — if the worst came to the worst — than suffer a long, drawn-out end.
‘Lynda wasn’t frightened of dying. For her, life was for living to the full. She didn’t want to carry on when there was no quality of life.
‘She used to say to me: “Michael, you won’t ever let me suffer, will you?” And I promised I wouldn’t.
‘I used to joke: “You’ll know when the end has come, Lynda. I’ll put a cigarette in your mouth, a bottle of vodka in your hand and push you over the white cliffs of Dover in a wheelchair.”
‘ But i f Lynda had ever seriously asked me to end her life, I would have done it, no question. I l oved her so much, I would rather have gone to prison than let her suffer, but it never came to that. The cancer was killing her so quickly, the need never arose, and the wonderful doctors and nurses made sure she didn’t suffer.’
Lynda had hoped to die at home — in January after Christmas — but her pain suddenly became so intense she had to be admitted to the London Clinic in the second week of October for it to be brought under control.
‘She was meant to be coming home after a week, but the pain was getting worse and the doctor said: “Sorry, Lynda, you can’t go home now.”
‘She knew then that the end was near. She accepted it and was at peace with that. During that last week, we said everything we needed to say to each other, and I will always be grateful for that. Lynda died knowing that she was loved.
‘But where do I go from here? Her death has left the biggest hole in my life. Lynda always said she wanted me to meet someone else after she died, but I don’t think it will happen. Lynda was a one-off. She was everything a man could ever want in a woman.
‘What I had in my ten years with Lynda, most people never have in a lifetime.
‘She called me Mr Spain, but I felt like “Mr Truly Lucky”.’
The Boy I Love is published by Simon and Schuster on Thursday, November 20, at £14.99.