There's Something I've Been Dying to Tell You Read online

  One does become obsessed with oneself in a rather unattractive way. I soon learned to keep all my ablutions to myself for the sake of the rest of the family’s sanity, but in a way it was also the only thing to do to feel I did have some control on my body. I hated taking all the medications and started to investigate alternatives.

  I have two or three very dear friends who wrote to me with their suggestions for a natural approach to my diet, which was proving troublesome. I tried to eat healthily but so much food now tasted of absolutely nothing. Unfortunately the two things that never let me down in taste were salt and sugar, both the Devil’s work. I was still following Deborah Morgan’s instructions, following our week with her in Majorca the previous October, and Michael and I were on the juicing regime. I had also been advised that lemons were the ultimate fruit for cancer. The suggestion was to keep a bag of lemons in the freezer at all times and use the skins grated on food and in hot water and drinks as much as possible.

  So my diet had become a regime of waking up with hot fresh lemon and honey. Then I made a juice for Michael and me of spinach, courgettes, ginger, celery and a couple of apples. It wasn’t a great taste and it took me a while to get the ingredients just right. The temptation was to make fruit smoothies with strawberries and blueberries and all things sweet, but they should only be a treat as they are fructose which is another form of the dreaded sugar. The secret is to have fruit for sweetness, but always have a vegetable in there as well. I finally cracked it, and my best offerings are carrot, orange and fresh ginger or spinach, courgette and fresh pineapple, with ginger and celery and kiwi or fresh mango.

  I discovered Ottolenghi cook books and boy did I go to town, especially after I received the most amazing hamper from my lovely gorgeous friend Linda Scott. I was having trouble sleeping so I would creep out to the kitchen in the middle of the night and cook these amazing dishes using lentils and beetroot and cauliflower. My cauliflower fritters became legendary. The whole family was put on this diet and bless them they indulged me. But they did enjoy most of it, I think, although every now and then I caught my stepson Bradley with a KFC or Domino pizza, and my son Robbie would disappear up the road to the Chinese. My lovely husband stuck with it but his meals were tempered with white wine. I do have the odd glass of red wine from time to time, with my oncologist’s permission, but it is easy to succumb.

  I absolutely became obsessed with cooking and would lie in bed dreaming up my meals for the week. It is amazing how running a household can take up so much time and my family do eat so much. Robert, Bradley and Michael often pop home just coincidentally around dinner time, and my dear husband only likes proper meals of meat and vegetables – no pasta or casseroles for him, thank you very much – which means I have to think of lots of meal variations. My sister, Jean, often joins us for Sunday lunch and my friend Pat and, of course, my grandson too. I now had my Tesco shopping online down to a fine art and my weekly walkabout round Waitrose for treats was great fun. Previously when I was working all shopping was done at a gallop like I was in my own version of Supermarket Sweep. Now I strolled round picking things up and reading all the labels. I bumped into Tom Wilkinson one morning doing exactly the same thing and couldn’t resist suggesting to him it was a far cry from Hollywood where his very successful career had taken him.

  He smiled and said, ‘Ah, but Lynda, I get so homesick for North London and my Waitrose weekly wander.’ And off he strolled happy as a sandboy.

  Unfortunately for me I was starting to develop stomach cramps which nobody could explain. Then when I went in for my next chemo the nurse couldn’t find my port to inject me. After much rather painful pressing and pulling it was announced the port had twisted over, a very unusual occurrence apparently, but Hello? It’s me, isn’t it? Her of the good fortune, not. So there was no chemo that day and I was admitted to the clinic to have another port put in. I didn’t feel great about going back into hospital, I felt I had done enough of that now, thank you very much.

  Lovely Professor Stebbing came to visit and told me some good news for a change. Every chemo day, before the treatment actually starts, the nurses check your blood and take blood tests to check your white and red blood cells. This then gives them an idea of how well the chemo is working at keeping the tumours at bay especially in the secondaries. If these markers go up it means the combination of drugs is not working and they will then try a different combination. Ultimately, the one sure way to find out what is going on is to have an MRI scan and after a series of chemos, usually a course of twelve, they will take a scan, check the state of play, and then either give the patient a break for a while or decide on a different cocktail. Apparently, the good news was that I was a textbook case, and responding to the chemo brilliantly.

  We also talked about my food regime in relation to the stomach cramps and Justin reckoned it was not doing me any good so I made an appointment to see the clinic dietitian next time I was in the clinic.

  The following week was tough. The stomach cramps were getting worse, and I was not sure what I should be eating, but as I was feeling sick most of the time food was not really my number one priority. But on Wednesday 11 September I had an MRI scan and the results were great. Cancer markers were down by 50 per cent and the tumour was visibly reduced. So onwards and upwards!

  6

  LOW TIDES AND HIGH TEA

  The great thing for me during this period was that although I was no longer in the public eye much, and there was certainly no sign of offers flooding in, I discovered I had a different kind of life, and one I had missed out on so much while being away on tour. I also discovered with genuine surprise, and real joy, that I had so many people and fans who really cared about me. I have received over a thousand letters of encouragement and sympathy and they are just so amazing and uplifting. I was very aware when I started writing this book that I wanted it to be for everyone who has suffered or is suffering, not just cancer, but any potentially life-threatening illness. I am fortunate enough to tell my story like this because I have been in the public eye for many years, but through all the letters I read I learned so much about the human spirit and just how much people will go through to hang on to their lives and their families. It has been a salutary lesson.

  It was also very interesting how many people assume, because I am a woman, that I have breast cancer. I am reminded of a story of a young woman who was suffering from bowel cancer and said she almost wished she had breast cancer because it got so much more press attention because somehow it was seen as sexier. She received a good deal of flak for those comments but I understand completely where she was coming from as bowel cancer is so difficult to talk about or present in an attractive way. Yet more people die of bowel cancer than they do from breast cancer, can you believe?

  I am hoping to start campaigning for Justin Stebbing’s charity Action Against Cancer, I have already worked with Macmillan Cancer Care in the past because my cousin was a Macmillan nurse, and I have done some work for Marie Curie Cancer Care as Jane Cotton, a charity worker I was close to, worked with them. It is only now that I have so much more knowledge of the whole set up that it has become clear to me that the most important, really the most vital, problem is raising money for research. That is the beginning and end of cracking these diseases.

  So over the following months I spent a good deal of the days answering all these wonderful letters, many from the readers of Yours magazine for whom I write a fortnightly column. I also received mountains of flowers – some from people I had not seen for years. I could not believe that word can spread so fast. I could have adopted a serious and expensive habit of having fresh flowers every day in my flat. I loved it. The door would ring and there would be another bouquet. Thank you again to everyone for your kindness and generosity, you made an old woman very happy!

  I had been starting to write my second novel, The Boy I Love, which is all about a band of actors in the early 1980s. It was due for delivery in October, but it was proving slightly more dif
ficult than I had anticipated as I was not 100 per cent. My usual practice of getting up at five and writing until noon was a struggle. It was also apparent to me that I was writing a book which opens with a bright optimistic young actress setting out full of hope on her first job in the theatre. This was not my state of mind, and I had to keep reminding myself to be happy. Mind over matter again you see?

  It was slowly coming together and helped by various outings away from home, like our visit to Bosham to see Mr and Mrs Albert Finney. A few years ago I appeared as a wicked widow in a series for ITV called My Uncle Silas, starring Albert Finney. I make no bones about my admiration for this amazing actor and I was so thrilled to get to work with him. He has two films that people will recognise him for: Tom Jones, a fantastic film made in 1963, and the second is a more recent one – James Bond fans will know him from his performance as Bond’s oldest friend and guardian of the family home in Scotland in Skyfall. Of course he is one of our greatest British actors and he was first discovered from RADA in the 1960 film Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, but there have been so many since including Erin Brockovich, Annie, and a wonderful rendering of Hercule Poirot in Murder on the Orient Express. He is just a lovely man and his wife Pene is also gorgeous. She was a great friend of a mutual friend, Sally Bulloch, who was the entertainments manager at the glorious Athenaeum Hotel.

  So I had rung Pene Finney and all but invited ourselves down to visit. They could not accommodate us as they had a dear friend visiting, who I also knew well from the old days, called Julian Holloway. Julian is the son of actor Stanley Holloway, and had moved to Los Angeles and had a successful career there. Julian and Albert were very old sparring partners, and ardent cricket fans, and according to Pene glued to the television coverage of the cricket, so she was delighted we could come and give her moral support.

  She suggested we stay at The Richmond Arms in West Ashling. I rang immediately only to be disappointed. They could not do the Friday night but Saturday was free so we booked that and then for the Friday night, they suggested a B&B up the road to which they often referred their customers when they were busy. Having spent years of my early life in the theatre in B&Bs I was not overly keen but was persuaded to give it a try. Well it was like no other B&B I had ever been in. I guess I should have realised we were in the vicinity of Chichester as opposed to Blackpool. No offence Blackpool, but you offer a different kind of old world charm. This house on the water’s edge was absolutely beautiful and Phillipa, our landlady, was so charming, and even offered to drive us to The Richmond Arms because we had booked a table for dinner there assuming the B&B might be a bit lacking. How wrong can you be? We had a lovely room with our own bathroom, and breakfast was a dream of fresh fruit and croissants and wonderful coffee all served in the garden in beautiful July sunshine. It was perfect.

  Our dinner at The Richmond Arms was also wonderful. Situated in a tiny village with a pond, a pub, a fantastic village green and not much else, it was extraordinary to think how far people obviously travelled to partake of this amazing restaurant’s food and drink. Albert told us he thought it was deserving of a Michelin star and we couldn’t have agreed more. Outside they had an old French van which opened to serve wood fired pizzas so there were lots of happy families which created a great atmosphere all round, while inside the diners had the peace and quiet. It was the first time Michael and I had really had the time to sit and discuss our future, or fate, whichever way one looked at it. So we drank too much fantastic wine, and ate wonderful seafood and had a little cry, but soon the whole ambience won us over, and we relaxed. It was just like being in a small village in France or Italy. We took a cab back to our gorgeous digs and fell into bed and slept like babies.

  After our superb breakfast we bade farewell to Pippy and John, our hosts at the B&B, and made our way to Emsworth. Pene had come to pick us up and gave us a guided tour. Albert and Pene have the perfect home within walking distance of the sea, and as Albi pointed out the town boasts over thirty pubs! Their house has a walled garden and herb patch, and it was full of gorgeous flowers. It had that wonderful calm about it which I always associate with walled gardens, as the old brickwork seems to absorb all outside noise except the birds and the bees. We sat and had a lovely glass of something cool and fizzy while awaiting the arrival of Julian Holloway. It was good to see him again and remember old times. We then adjourned to Albert’s local, The Bluebell, and had a glorious boozy lunch. I had fish and chips, it was bliss. The two actors then went home to watch the cricket and Pene took us down to a little beach hidden at the end of an alleyway right opposite their house. We sat and ate ice creams. Michael and I left them at teatime and returned to The Richmond Arms which was to be our bed for the night. It only has two rooms but they are both delightful, so one really does have to book early to avoid disappointment. There was a free-standing bath by an open window so I sat in the water watching the birds wheeling overhead outside, and listened to the sound of doves, their gentle cooing interrupted by the harsh shriek of an occasional seagull. Another balmy night and this time we had our dinner outside and chatted to some of the locals who were very pleasant and welcoming. It really was perfect. The next morning we rose to a full English breakfast of outstanding proportions then set off back to London feeling at peace with the world. I know it is a cliché but once one has seen the horizon beckon it is a duty to take each day as it comes, and grab every opportunity to enjoy the hours and days you have left.

  During these weeks though there were several pieces of sad news. My friend David Robb’s wife Briony McRoberts committed suicide on the underground. One cannot begin to understand either her state of mind, or how poor David must feel. They had such a strong and happy marriage, which is unusual in our game. The funeral was a really moving and sensitive affair, and so many actors and friends turned out to wish her well which must have meant a great deal to David. I looked round the church and saw Samantha Bond, of Miss Moneypenny fame, sat next to Elaine Paige and Nickolas Grace. I bumped into so many mates like Amanda Redman and her daughter Emily. Julian Fellowes, and his wife, and most of the cast of Downton Abbey, as David had been appearing in the series. I guess once again, though, for all the camaraderie in show business there is that horrible downside when you are not recognised for your work and it impacts on one’s self-esteem and can destroy gentle souls. We also lost a good friend Ian, who worked with my best mate Pat Hay, who was the make-up designer on New Tricks. He was such a gentle and kind soul but riddled with cancer. Mel Smith also died on 19 July – another very sensitive and funny man.

  But enough of this gloom and doom. On 22 July Kate Middleton presented the nation with the gorgeous Prince George. What a lovely big bouncy boy! I felt a bit closer to the action – if only a smidgeon – because we share Sir Marcus. In fact, later in the year Sir Marcus Setchell announced his retirement and there was a wonderful lunch in his honour and I was lucky enough to be invited. I arrived at the Hilton on my own, knowing no one, but thank goodness I bumped into Victoria Wood and we chatted away quite happily. I couldn’t quite understand why there were so few guests in the room until the lovely Carole, Sir Marcus’s assistant, explained we had been chosen as special guests to be introduced to the Duchess.

  I then proceeded to completely mess my introduction up, because while we were waiting I saw Carole across the room and I knew she wanted to have her photo taken with us. I made a beeline for her, not even noticing who she was talking to, and even started to interrupt the conversation until I turned to the pretty girl to my left to apologise and realised it was Kate Middleton, and they were just about to have their photo taken with her. I was mortified and fled the room and hid in the toilet! When I came out I went straight to my table in the main dining room and waited for the arrival of the royal party and their special guests. I had missed my moment. Still I did get a lovely close-up look at the Duchess, and although I think she is too thin she is very lovely both to look at, and in her nature. So I think Will is a lucky man, as are we
as a nation, to have a couple representing the country who are such a down-to-earth couple, but also who have a great deal of style and class. Please let our younger generations aspire to them, rather than being a celebrity style bling society who value nothing but too much money and no taste. Ooh, listen to me. But I can say things like this now, because I have got cancer!

  July ended on a high note with tea at Claridge’s with my sister Jean, a birthday present from a lovely friend, Katie Mallalieu. We met on Twitter, can you believe? She was a big fan of Calendar Girls but we have become good friends ever since. Jean and I stuffed everything in our mouths – in a ladylike way naturally – and toasted ourselves with a glass of champagne as we hoped it wasn’t going to be our last supper! I was aware that this sort of diet was maybe not quite what I should be having but so far nothing else I had tried had worked, so I might as well indulge in a little something I’d enjoy for soon enough it would be back to the grindstone and my new routine of chemo, drugs and tests.