Esther Rantzen’s daughter tells of ‘great love’ and ‘great grief’

Dame Esther Rantzen’s daughter has said it is just “dreadful” being without her but there are still lovely memories.

The Childline founder, who had been diagnosed with stage four lung cancer in 2023, died at her home in the New Forest on September 30.

The 86-year-old broadcaster and campaigner’s family confirmed Dame Esther was laid to rest in an “incredibly beautiful” private funeral last week but she spoke of feeling “deprived of any choice over my own death” in a newly published note written before she died.

Her daughter Rebecca Wilcox told the BBC’s The One Show she just wants “more memories” of her mother who “is a star”.

She said: “We are dreadful but when you have had great love you have great grief and that is what we knew would happen.

“We had three and a half years after her diagnosis. She would not let go. She lived every minute of that life.

“She is a star and now she is up there with the other stars and my dad (journalist Desmond Wilcox) and it’s awful. I’m trying to put a brave face on it.”

Dame Esther presented That’s Life! for 21 years and set up the children’s charity Childline in 1986, and later The Silver Line helpline for older people.

Ms Wilcox, who followed her mother into a career in consumer journalism  where Dame Esther “smashed all those glass ceilings and did so brilliantly – I just feel honoured to be in something similar as her career”.

Ms Wilcox is also working with Childline, which marks its 40th anniversary on October 30.

She told the programme: “It is really important that we get the message out to children that we are here.

“We are annoyingly more important than ever. I wish we were redundant. I wish we were not necessary”.

She described Dame Esther as “the naughtiest grandmother” because she would spoil the grandchildren with chocolates at breakfast, playing lions with them on the floor and taking them wherever they wanted to go as “the word ‘no’ did not exist” for her.

Her children’s friends are also having a “difficult time” with Dame Esther’s death as she was like a grandmother to them too and “they all adored her”, according to Ms Wilcox.

Dame Esther had become a strong proponent for assisted dying in her later years, and her family this week revealed she left a “goodbye and thank you” note for all those who campaigned on the “crucial life and death issue”.

In the note, Dame Esther wrote: “It would have transformed the way I died if the law had allowed me to ask for assistance to die when my life had become unbearable.

“Not because I would have used that choice. But because the last days and weeks would have been infused with the hope and confidence of a swift, pain-free death and my family would not have had to witness any suffering or lack of dignity and privacy at the end.

“I know from my own experience that witnessing those agonising moments can blot out all the memories of so many happy days spent with the people that you love.

“I was extremely lucky because I had the talent, skill and support of my local Oakhaven Hospice. But I was still deprived of any choice over my own death by the current messy criminal law.”

She confirmed she had become “too physically frail to take the flight” to an assisted dying clinic in Switzerland.

To those who opposed the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill – which had been introduced in Parliament in 2024 but failed to make its way into law – Dame Esther added “rest assured I will not come back to haunt you, I have better things to do and anyway I believe you too have the right to choose, but not the right to impose your choice on the most vulnerable people such as dying, frail little old ladies like me.”