Bellingham - Lost and Found: my story

Looking back, perhaps the single biggest problem was fear. Fear of failure, fear of other people but mostly fear of myself. It has taken many years to discover who I really am. Its never too late to find yourself, however lost you may be ...

In Lynda Bellinghams blisteringly honest autobiography, the much-loved actress and Loose Women panellist reveals the truth about her life, including her search for her birth mother, only to lose her again to Alzheimers, and her many years married to an abusive man while playing the nations mum in the Oxo adverts.

But Lynda never lost her sense of humour, and among the darker moments she recalls hilarious anecdotes from her time on stage and screen. Lost and Found is an inspiring story of getting through the tough times with the strong spirit of a survivor, and finally finding true love.

Lynda Bellingham was a regular on ITVs Loose Women, appeared on BBC1s 2009 Strictly Come Dancing and also played the lead role in the stage version Calendar Girls on the West End stage and touring the country. Her television career spanned over 40 years, and included All Creatures Great and Small, Doctor Who, Second Thoughts, Faith in the Future (Best Comedy 1997), At Home with the Braithwaites, The Bill and the much-loved role of Oxo Mum. Finding love and happiness in later life, she married Michael Pattemore in 2008, the man known to Loose Women viewers as Mr Spain.

Lynda was diagnosed with bowel cancer in 2013, and sadly passed away a year later aged 66.

I would like to thank: my sister Jean, for all her help; my editor, Charlotte Cole; Gordon Wise, for encouragement and support; and Sue Latimer and Oriana Elia for keeping faith with me. And finally my thanks to anyone and everyone who has read my story.

There was a little girl
And she had a little curl
Right in the middle of her forehead.
And when she was good
She was very, very good
And when she was bad
She was horrid!

I N N OVEMBER 1948, Don and Ruth Bellingham flew back to England with their new baby girl. How excited they must have been. My dad was actually piloting the plane so it was an even more auspicious occasion. Quite early on in the flight, however, an engine caught fire and my father had to take the decision to turn round and go back to New York to land. So I was causing trouble from day one!

In those days it was a big deal to fly the Atlantic, and I was presented with a certificate pronouncing me a member of the Honourable Order of Pond Hoppers. It is signed by my dad, Captain D J Bellingham, and hangs in my lavatory. This always made my dad smile, because he felt it should have been hanging somewhere more salubrious, but I would tell him that I wanted everyone to see it.

My dad was the youngest of four boys. The other three were farmers, but my dad was able to use the Second World War as an excuse to learn to fly, which he wanted to do very much. During the war my father was posted just outside Oxford. My mother was working in a factory in Headingly, near where she lived. Their courtship was conducted in the local pub and riding their bikes down long country lanes. It was only much later, when he retired from BOAC (now British Airways), that he went back to his roots and took up farming.

But when my parents came back to the UK in 1948, we first stayed in a little cottage on the farm owned by my paternal grandfather, at Great Kingshill, Buckinghamshire. I dont remember much of my early days at the farm, but there are photos of me with my grandfather sitting on a large carthorse, and it was the beginning of my love for the country and life on a farm.

We used to visit all the time after we moved to Bristol, and I have such fond memories of Sundays spent at Kingshill. My nan used to take me out to a huge cherry tree in the garden in the summer and I would help her pick cherries. We would make a picnic and have our tea under this beautiful spreading tree. Then in winter, we used to have our tea round a big table in the parlour. I always wanted to watch Robin Hood starring Richard Greene and my mother would say no but my nan would say yes. Guess which one I listened to! My nan was quite plump and had snowy white hair. She had an aura of calm about her. She never raised her voice in anger and I was always respectful of her. She was forever working in the house. She never sat down: even when we were eating our tea she would hover to make sure we all had everything we might want.

I used to go out with Grandad to bring the cows in for milking. I would scurry along beside him as he strode forth with a big stick in his hands. I had a little stick to match, and rather oversized wellies, as I recall. He owned a very ferocious bull that was infamous with the locals, but Grandad was frightened of nothing: I heard stories from my dad that they would let the beast out to service the cows and could only get him back in his pen again by being chased in a pony and trap by my grandfather. On several occasions disaster struck, the trap tipped over, and Grandad was deposited in the mud; twice he was actually gored by the bull. I used to stand in the bull pen and watch him pawing the ground: he really was scary, snorting and banging his horns on the railings. And that was just Grandad!

A ROUND 1950, we moved to Bristol. I must have been about two or three. It was a brand new council estate. During this time I didnt see much of Dad as he was flying for BOAC on long-haul flights. I had Mum pretty much to myself, and it was a shock when my sister, Barbara, arrived in February 1951.

My parents had decided to keep my adoption a secret to all but close friends and family: people just assumed I had been born in Canada while Dad was working there. So it must have been very strange for them, especially my mother, when she fell pregnant with Barbara. Of course, she had to tell the midwife eventually, because the assumption was that my mother knew what she was doing for childbirth, as she already had one child. Nothing could have been further from the truth!

Barbara was followed very quickly by Jean in 1952. I really dont remember being jealous, but there is a photo of me looking at Barbara in her cot with a look of horror on my face. I do recall going into her bedroom once, when everyone was downstairs, and staring at this peacefully sleeping creature in its cot, and I believe I gave her a poke or two, which resulted in waking her up, and caused her to burst into very loud screams. This, of course, brought Mother running up the stairs, to see me backing hurriedly out of the room and trying to disappear.

Because my sisters were close together in age, it set a sort of pattern for life. Me and them. Which was slightly ironic, given that I was adopted. Yet as you will see from the early photos of us all, at one stage we looked liked triplets. But to me, the most telling photo of all shows Barbara sitting on Dads knee and Jean with Mummy. I am standing to the side, on my own, defiantly striking a pose. Slowly, over the coming years, I would begin to wonder: where did I fit in?

But I had an idyllic childhood. In those early days, I was educated at home. This was quite unusual in those days and I think my parents may have got the idea from other couples who were with BOAC, who had similar problems of moving house frequently or being abroad.

After Bristol, we went to Limerick, in southern Ireland, for a year in 1954, as my dad was training pilots at Shannon Airport. Our house was on a very new residential estate; I remember seeing ditches everywhere that were the foundations for other houses. It was a great place to play in but not much fun on my own, and I was desperate to meet and play with the local kids, who never seemed to go to school. Truancy was rife. Limerick was quite rough in those days and very anti-British. I found this out to my cost one afternoon. My dad tells the story of coming home one day and seeing me in the distance, pushed up against a wall and surrounded by a group of children who were all shouting abuse at me, while I was singing God Save the Queen at the top of my voice. Not a good idea! I must have won them over, however, because I was invited to join the gang on a trip across the river, one day. The river in question was the Shannon, and near the estate it was very deep and fast flowing. Early on in our stay, my parents had taken me aside, and explained to me that on no account must I EVER go near the river, or on it, for any reason whatsoever. So there I was, one sunny afternoon, dressed in my favourite pink and white spotty dress, being rowed across the Shannon in a little round craft made by the locals, bobbing up and down and shrieking delightedly. I was to find out later, to my cost, that I was also very visible. I had a wonderful afternoon and returned home for my tea in blissful ignorance of what was awaiting me. I was greeted by both my parents in the front room. Had I had a nice day? I nodded. Where had I been? Around. Why didnt I tell anyone where I was? Dont know. Did I know that a little girl in a pink and white spotty dress had been seen on the island this afternoon? Gulp. I have never again seen my father as angry as he was that day. Obviously, he was worried and frightened for me, but he chased me upstairs to my room where I hid under the bed, to no avail, as he grabbed my leg and pulled me out and spanked me with a hair brush (this was the good old days). I was locked in my room for the rest of the night without any tea.