Born: 31st May 1948 (as Meredith Lee Hughes)
Died: 19th October 2014 (aged 66 years)
Episodes Broadcast: 1986

Meredith Hughes was born out of wedlock in Montreal, Quebec and given up for adoption by her teenaged mother. She was adopted by the Bellingham family of Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, who renamed her Lynda. She began acting in the Pendley Open Air Shakespeare Festival during her summer holidays, and was accepted at the Central School of Speech and Drama in 1966. Several years in repertory theatre led to Bellingham's first television role in a 1971 episode of The Misfit. After more substantial parts in Kate and A Family At War, Bellingham was prominent in the soap opera General Hospital for a year. For a while thereafter, however, she became typecast in ribald comedies such as Tell Tarby. This translated to the silver screen as well, where Bellingham could be seen in the 1976 sex romp Confessions Of A Driving Instructor. She married its producer, Greg Smith, in 1975; they divorced after a year. Other Seventies television included recurring roles in Z Cars, Couples, The Fuzz and The Pink Medicine Show.

Amongst Bellingham's credits during the early Eighties were Mackenzie, Funny Man, Murphy's Mob and Angels. She married restauranteur Nunzio Peluso in 1981, and they had sons Michael and Robert. In 1983, Bellingham won the role of the mother in a series of advertisements for the Oxo food company. The campaign would prove to be an enduring success, continuing until 1999. Bellingham co-starred in all fourteen episodes of Doctor Who's 1986 season. Here she played the Inquisitor, presiding over a tribunal interrogating the activities of Colin Baker's Sixth Doctor in The Trial Of A Time Lord. Bellingham ended the decade with four seasons on All Creatures Great And Small.

From 2004, Bellingham reprised the Inquisitor for Big Finish Productions' range of Doctor Who audio dramas

Bellingham spent much of the Nineties starring in the sitcom Second Thoughts and its sequel, Faith In The Future; other appearances included Martin Chuzzlewit and Casualty. In 1993, she was featured on This Is Your Life. Sadly, Bellingham had privately suffered abuse at her husband's hands for many years, and they were finally divorced in 1996. Following the turn of the century, she had recurring roles in At Home With The Braithwaites, The Bill and Bonkers. Bellingham reprised the Inquisitor for Big Finish Productions' range of Doctor Who audio dramas, initially in the 2004 Gallifrey play Weapon Of Choice. She started appearing on the chat show Loose Women in 2007, and married salesman Michael Pattemore the following year. In 2009, Bellingham was a contestant on the seventh season of Strictly Come Dancing. Having established her reality television credentials, she presented My Tasty Travels With Lynda Bellingham in 2012.

Bellingham released an autobiography in 2010 entitled Lost And Found: My Story. It was followed in 2013 by the novel Tell Me Tomorrow. The same year, Bellingham was diagnosed with colorectal cancer, which fuelled a 2014 memoir, There's Something I'm Dying To Tell You. Its publication came in the wake of her appointment to the Order of the British Empire for her charitable endeavours. Later in 2014, Bellingham chose to cease her chemotherapy; she died on October 19th. A second novel, The Boy I Love, was published the following month.