I fell in love with Lynda on sight — but her worried friends gave me the third degree
Lynda Bellingham’s grieving husband on an unlikely love story that was cruelly cut short
happy for her to move to Spain to live with me. After we became an item, her career started to take off again. She was the star and I was happy to support her from the shadows.’
Likewise, Lynda’s sons — actor Michael Peluso and his younger brother, Robbie, a hotel guest relations manager — were wary.
There were a couple of mild standoffs, but they, too, warmed to Michael, who says they get on ‘like a house on fire’. Lynda turned down Michael’s first marriage proposal, saying she was too old to marry again.
She accepted the second time, in 2007, when he slipped an engagement r i ng i nto her gl ass of champagne during dinner at The Ivy in London — even though she almost swallowed it by mistake.
At their 2008 wedding, on Lynda’s 60th birthday, Michael stood up and promised to protect his wife. He more than kept his word.
There was, of course, no escaping her fame, even at their wedding. One well-known female guest — a household name who will remain nameless to save her blushes — went up to ‘Oxo dad’ actor Michael Redfern (also a guest) and congratulated him on his marriage to Lynda.
Having starred in the Oxo ads together for 16 years, it was perhaps an easy mistake to make, for Lynda’s image had become welded to that of the Oxo mum. Much to her distress, because she wanted to be remembered for being an actress, rather than a ‘celebrity’. Intelligent, warm, funny and vibrant, she was a natural choice for ITV1’s daytime chat show Loose Women. ‘Bellers’ — as she was known to her co-stars — was an immediate hit with viewers.
So it was with some surprise the mourners at her funeral heard — among the many tributes — Lynda’s fellow panellist Jane McDonald tell the congregation that ‘Bellers hated the show with a passion’. ‘She didn’t hate the show as such, but she hated it in the way she did the Oxo ads,’ says Michael.
‘She felt typecast by them and felt they marred her career, preventing her from getting the acting jobs she really wanted.
‘Today, you see lots of well-known actors doing commercials, but 20 years ago, that wasn’t the case. Being the Oxo Mum for 16 years, she felt that’s how people saw her. It was the same with Loose Women. Though it was hugely successful, Lynda wanted to be seen as an actress.
‘Once we were at a party on a yacht and Lynda was talking to a respected writer — someone she’d known for 40 years — and she asked him: “Why won’t you give me a job?” He turned to her and said: “My dear, I can’t give a job to a Loose Woman.”
‘Later I found Lynda sobbing her heart out. She said to me “Michael, I’ve got to get the hell out”, and that’s what she did. That’s why she left the show.’
Michael became Lynda’s biggest cheerleader and likes to think, with his support, she was beginning to enjoy an acting renaissance.
For four years, she starred in the theatrical production of Calendar Girls, but he reveals it very nearly didn’t happen. The story was about a group of Yorkshire women who pose naked for a calendar to raise money for a cancer charity in memory of a friend.
‘When Lynda received the script, she read it a hundred times. She was desperate to play the main character, Chris Harper — whose idea it was to strip off for the Women’s Institute calendar — but one day I came home to find her sobbing.
‘She told me they didn’t want her for the role of Chris, but for the supporting role of Annie.
‘I told her “Ring them up and say: ‘If I can’t play Chris, f*** off!” ’ She said:
‘She hated Loose Women because it typecast her’
“Michael, I can’t say that.” But she did, and guess what? She got the part of Chris and she was brilliant.’
Lynda was thrilled when David Pugh, producer of Calendar Girls, asked her to star in A Passionate Woman.
She’d started the read-throughs and was raring to start rehearsals ahead of the tour when she was diagnosed with cancer in July 2013.
So determined was she to carry on t hat she discussed with her oncologist arranging chemotherapy in different venues around Britain. After she nearly died last Christmas — undergoing emergency surgery to removed a tumour from her bowel — she realised it was impossible: her career was over.
Earlier this year, Lynda was offered her last job while she and Michael were on holiday in Lake Como, Italy.
The producers of I’m A Celebrity — who had no idea Lynda was so ill — wanted her in the jungle. Michael had no doubt Lynda would have ended up the mother of the camp, cooking for everyone and turning their meagre rations into a feast, but her condition made it impossible.
‘We laughed at the idea and I said to Lynda: “Perhaps you could hide behind a bush while you have your chemo?” ’ says Michael.
‘Even if Lynda had wanted to carry on working as an actress, no one would have employed her because with cancer she couldn’t be insured. She was devastated.
‘Writing was her salvation, but when she told me she was planning to write a book about her cancer, I said: “Lynda, I don’t think that’s a very good idea.” But she wanted to help other people. What Lynda did, writing with such bravery and honesty, was to show people how to die with dignity.
‘She was amazed by the public response, completely overwhelmed, and we were flooded with letters, cards and flowers. Until then, she had no idea how loved she was.
‘ David Pugh told her: “Lynda, you are lucky. Most people never get to know how much they are loved, but you’ve had a taste of it before you die.” ’