Lynda Bellingham reveals her cancer has become terminal

Lynda Bellingham has revealed that she has terminal cancer and is planning to stop receiving treatment.

The Canadian-born English actress, 66, first spoke publicly about being diagnosed with colorectal cancer last year. Now she has revealed in extracts from her forthcoming book, Abridged from Memoir, that the cancer has spread to her lungs and liver, and her condition has become terminal.

“I would love to make one more Christmas, if possible, but I want to stop taking chemo around November in order to pass away by the end of January,” says the actress in an extract published in the Mail on Sunday.

“I want my family to remember me whole. I want you all to remember me,” she adds.

Bellingham landed her first major TV role on ITV’s 70s soap General Hospital, in which she played a nurse. In the 80s she appeared as the Inquisitor in the 14-part Doctor Who serial The Trial of a Time Lord and also starred in later series of ITV’s popular drama All Creatures Great and Small.

Famously, she played the family matriarch in Oxo’s iconic gravy adverts between 1983 and 1999.

In recent years, she has featured on the panel of ITV’s Loose Women and presented ITV’s lifestyle show Country House Sunday. She was made an OBE earlier this year for voluntary service to charitable giving.

She married her third husband, Michael Pattemore, in 2008 and has two sons from a previous marriage.

Her book Abridged from Memoir will be published on October 9.