Tributes paid to 'inspirational' presenter and charity founder Esther Rantzen

ByIan Youngs

Culture reporter

Dame Esther Rantzen was "an inspirational individual" who was "quite a force" arsenic a campaigner, according to the manager of Childline, the children's helpline founded by the broadcaster successful the 1980s.

"She inspired people, she energised people, she persuaded people," Shaun Friel told BBC Breakfast. "She had a large caput and she had evidently that earthy journalistic ability."

Dame Esther, who died connected Wednesday astatine the property of 86, was known for presenting BBC user amusement That's Life! for 21 years, and for campaigning connected issues including kid payment and assisted dying.

Prime Minister Andy Burnham led the tributes, saying the seasoned broadcaster had "changed countless lives".

BBC manager wide Matt Brittin besides paid tribute to Dame Esther, describing her arsenic a "legend of British broadcasting" whose publication to nationalist beingness was "immeasurable".

"Her warmth, tone and combat for justness and enactment that we saw connected our screens continued agelong aft the programme ended, with a beingness of campaigning wherever she changed the lives of millions," helium said.

Fellow broadcaster and wealth redeeming adept Martin Lewis called Dame Esther an "inspiration" and a "pioneer" whose "impact and representation volition agelong proceed to shine".

Chris Sherwood, main enforcement of the NSPCC, which runs Childline, said Dame Esther had gone to "exceptional lengths to guarantee children and young radical crossed the UK had determination to crook erstwhile they were successful request of help".

Dame Esther acceptable up the telephone helpline successful 1986 aft featuring a fig of incidents of kid maltreatment and neglect connected That's Life! and realising that galore children had obscurity to turn.

Speaking to BBC Breakfast, Friel said: "The bequest that Dame Esther created erstwhile she created Childline is thing rather incredible. She changed however nine looked upon children."

He added: "When she decided she had a imaginativeness oregon thing had to beryllium done oregon had to beryllium changed, she was rather a force."

Childline merged with the NSPCC successful 2006. In 2013, Dame Esther founded The Silver Line to assistance older radical suffering from isolation and loneliness.

She besides led campaigns connected safety. organ donation and bullying, and aboriginal successful beingness became a salient campaigner for the legalisation of assisted dying.

She had been terminally sick with lung cancer. In 2023, she revealed she had joined Dignitas, the Swiss assisted dying clinic, but past period said she was present "too physically fragile to marque the journey".

Burnham said helium would "always respect the diagnostic courageousness and openness with which she spoke astir her illness, making america each deliberation astir the hard questions we look astatine the extremity of life".

Kim Leadbeater, the Labour MP who sponsored the assisted dying bill, told the BBC that Dame Esther was a "wonderful premix of spot and feistiness, but besides truly heavy compassion and kindness" - and that she would proceed to animate campaigners.

Baroness Jan Royall, erstwhile person of the House of Lords and a person of Dame Esther, told BBC Radio 4's Today programme connected Thursday that she was a "formidable" person.

"She was an extraordinary, compassionate woman, a passionate woman, and she brought astir specified alteration successful our world, alteration for the better."

Baroness Royall added that Dame Esther had "a wicked consciousness of humour" and a "zest for life", which was the happening that "drove her to effort and amended people's lives done Silver Line, Childline etc, but besides with the assisted dying bill."

Dame Esther's That's Life! co-presenter Bill Buckley told the BBC's Radio 4 Front Row programme that "nothing would halt her" erstwhile it came to campaigning.

"She saw the airy astatine the extremity of the passageway and followed it doggedly," helium said.

Dame Elaine Paige, known for her roles successful West End productions similar Cats and Evita, paid tribute to a "great broadcaster, writer and campaigner".

She said: "Her Childline, the confidential counselling work for young radical successful distress, helped truthful galore children and The Silver Line was aimed astatine older radical suffering loneliness and isolation."

Anton Du Beke, Dame Esther's spouse connected Strictly Come Dancing, shared a photograph of the brace dancing unneurotic successful the 2004 series, penning that the 2 had "remained steadfast friends" ever since.

He praised her "breadth of cognition and passion" and called her "the eventual breaker of the solid ceiling", adding: "She volition beryllium greatly missed and my sincere thoughts are with her family."

Davina McCall wrote connected Instagram that Dame Esther had "made the satellite a amended place, and inspired truthful galore of america to bash amended and unrecorded beingness to its fullest."

The connection accompanied a video of the erstwhile Big Brother big discussing however Dame Esther was an "inspiration to girls similar maine erstwhile we were increasing up".

Presenter Amol Rajan said Dame Esther "changed the people of millions of lives" arsenic helium paid tribute, calling her "an inspirational, beardown pistillate up of her time".

"Not atrocious for a bright, Hertfordshire miss calved during the aboriginal stages of the Second World War."

Watch BBC media exertion Katie Razzall's half-hour peculiar programme Esther! connected iPlayer. It volition besides beryllium shown this Friday, 2 October, connected BBC One astatine 19:30 BST.