{"id":2473356,"date":"2026-06-24T10:25:29","date_gmt":"2026-06-24T10:25:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/?p=2473356"},"modified":"2026-06-24T10:25:29","modified_gmt":"2026-06-24T10:25:29","slug":"victoria-coren-mitchell-pays-poignant-tribute-to-esther-rantzen-celebrity-news-showbiz-tv","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/victoria-coren-mitchell-pays-poignant-tribute-to-esther-rantzen-celebrity-news-showbiz-tv\/","title":{"rendered":"Victoria Coren Mitchell pays poignant tribute to Esther Rantzen | Celebrity News | Showbiz & TV"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Only Connect presenter Victoria Coren Mitchell has paid a gushing tribute to Dame Esther Rantzen as the That’s Life legend celebrated her birthday on Monday June 22. Taking to X the BBC star penned: “In January 2023, the wonderful Esther Rantzen announced she had stage 4 lung cancer. Today she celebrates her 86th birthday. This example of hope is yet another way in which that magnificent woman has been a force for good in the world.” She added a link to a BBC Radio 4 chat she did with the assisted dying campaigner for the Women Talking About Cars show adding: “Here’s an interview I did with her in 2017, where she shines like a sunflower.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Esther sadly revealed earlier this year that the medicine, which was keeping her illness “at bay,” had stopped working. She addressed her own mortality<\/a> and told The Times<\/a>: “If there is a heaven, it would be a very happy place. It’s a lovely idea to meet [husband] Desmond [Wilcox] again and all those I have loved and lost – my parents and grandparents, my close friends and family.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The couple’s daughter Rebecca Wilcox, 46, also recently addressed her mother’s birthday in a chat with Express<\/a> columnist Vanessa Feltz<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“It\u2019s her birthday coming up. She\u2019s going to be 86, which is brilliant. She\u2019s as astonished as anybody that she\u2019s still here.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“We are so grateful. She was diagnosed three years ago with terminal stage four lung and breast cancer, so every day is a wonderful miracle, and we really are cherishing it. We are just so grateful to have her here,” she said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Reflecting on her own health journey, she said she had been wrong to assume her lung cancer<\/a> would kill her sooner and she reiterated her wish to go to Dignitas, if necessary, when life becomes \u201cunbearable\u201d.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Asked why the campaign for assisted dying had become so important, Dame Esther told Rebecca: \u201cYour father was a very keen campaigner for it. He made documentaries with people who were desperate to have the choice \u2014 that\u2019s all it\u2019s about. It\u2019s about terminally ill patients having the choice.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“So it was natural for me when I was diagnosed with stage four cancer to think: ‘Well, any moment now, I\u2019m going to have to buzz off to Zurich\u2019, which was a phrase I used at the time on a podcast and which seems to have appealed to people, not a lot but a bit.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n

\u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.express.co.uk \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Only Connect presenter Victoria Coren Mitchell has paid a gushing tribute to Dame Esther Rantzen as the That’s Life legend celebrated her birthday on Monday June 22. Taking to X the BBC star penned: “In January 2023, the wonderful Esther Rantzen announced she had stage 4 lung cancer. Today she celebrates her 86th birthday. This […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2473357,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25177],"tags":[486732,428723,486727,486726,486729,486725,486728,486730,426667,486724,486731],"class_list":["post-2473356","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-celebrities","tag-assisted-dying-news","tag-esther-rantzen","tag-esther-rantzen-assisted-dying","tag-esther-rantzen-birthday","tag-esther-rantzen-latest","tag-esther-rantzen-lung-cancer","tag-esther-rantzen-news","tag-esther-rantzen-tributes","tag-lung-cancer","tag-victoria-coren","tag-victoria-coren-mitchell-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/Victoria-Coren-Mitchell-pays-poignant-tribute-to-Esther-Rantzen.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2473356","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2473356"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2473356\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2473358,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2473356\/revisions\/2473358"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2473357"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2473356"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2473356"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2473356"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}