Former Watchdog host Lynn Faulds Wood dies aged 72

Former BBC Watchdog presenter and campaigning journalist Lynn Faulds Wood has died at the age of 72.

A assertion from her loved ones mentioned she died peacefully on Friday, “acquiring experienced a significant stroke final night and a subsequent bleed on the mind”.

The most cancers campaigner was greatest recognised for web hosting the buyer investigation programme from 1985 to 1993, together with her partner John Stapleton.

She was diagnosed with stage three bowel most cancers while operating the show.

• Former BBC presenter turns down MBE

Fellow Tv set presenter and journalist Dame Esther Rantzen led the tributes, saying: “I have recognised Lynn for lots of several years. We manufactured a series together which was substantial entertaining but also extremely really hard hitting, simply because she was these kinds of an outstanding and brave buyer journalist.

“She fought for the rights of susceptible individuals doggedly and determinedly and she is a substantial loss to journalism and to her close friends and loved ones. We are all devastated at this information.”

BBC Newsreader Sophie Raworth described Faulds Wood as “the most amazing, generous, kind mate”, while previous Watchdog host and 5 Live’s Nicky Campbell and LBC’s Shelagh Fogarty also paid out tribute to the “groundbreaking” broadcaster.

Journalist and media commentator Roy Greenslade additional he was “saddened to hear of the dying of 1 of the nicest individuals I at any time labored with,” describing her as “a fantastic buyer writer.”

The late broadcaster as soon as appeared in an episode of French and Saunders as herself, and another comic Rory Bremner famous on Friday how she had a wonderful perception of entertaining and “beloved our Watchdog [impressions]”.

Faulds Wood, who was born in Glasgow and grew up close to Loch Lomondside, started her career operating on stories and campaigns for newspapers which include the Daily Mail and The Sunshine.

She then moved into breakfast Tv set, prior to helping to flip Watchdog into a primetime BBC A person series.

Her investigations on the ITV show Earth In Motion assisted to develop the world’s 1st evidence-based mostly guide to symptoms of her most cancers.

In an job interview with Cancer Earth in 2006, the star discovered the BBC had turned down 1 of her programmes suggestions, back in what she named the most cancers “dim ages” of 1999, saying no 1 wanted to see the sickness reviewed for the duration of key-time viewing.

Just after having the all-apparent about her personal most cancers she felt ready to deal with the subject matter head on in the ITV programme Bobby Moore and Me, which went out on the thirtieth anniversary of England successful the football Earth Cup.

The victorious captain died of bowel most cancers in 1993 at the age of 51, but his wife Stephanie Moore gave her her 1st job interview, saying “she’d been waiting to chat about it”.

‘Unnecessary death’

“She’d recognised that it was an needless dying,” mentioned Faulds Wood.

“Bobby had four several years of symptoms and was instructed it was irritable bowel syndrome. In the programme I went by way of every stage in the most cancers journey and confirmed what was erroneous in the Uk.”

“I appeared miserable on digital camera – and I was, simply because it was so upsetting,” she additional.

She spent the following several months answering 28,000 letters – “a catalogue of human distress”.

“The Tv set company had by no means seen anything at all like it. That’s when I decided to give up most of my Tv set function and concentrate on bowel most cancers.”

The broadcast journalist went on to co-discovered the European Cancer Patient Coalition in 2002, which she chaired for 7 several years, and also assisted to established up MEPs Towards Cancer – pushing the case to raise recognition of the sickness in Europe.

In the mid-noughties she teamed up with Rantzen to current the BBC buyer investigation series Aged Pet dogs, New Methods, and afterwards severely regarded getting into politics in 2010, but decided to keep on being a campaigner.

She returned to Watchdog’s new daytime series Watchdog Check Residence, together with Raworth in 2014.

Two several years afterwards, Faulds Wood rejected an MBE, saying the honours method wants to be dragged “into the twenty first Century”.

The activist mentioned she would be a “hypocrite” to take the award for her function on buyer security.

Her nomination arrived following she chaired a federal government independent evaluate into the UK’s method for the recall of unsafe solutions which she feared had been “kicked into the extended grass”.

She afterwards named on the federal government to do a lot more to secure buyers from faulty solutions that can bring about fires, in the wake of the Grenfell Tower fireplace tragedy.

Her partner and son Nick had been at her bedside when she died.

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