On the night Childline opened in 1986, 50,000 calls tried to get through. The helpline had grown out of a single segment of That’s Life!, the BBC programme Esther Rantzen presented for 21 years, and it outlasted the show by three decades.
Dame Esther Rantzen died on September 30, 2026, at her home in the New Forest, surrounded by her family. She was 86, and had been living with stage four lung cancer since 2023.
“She was our sunshine,” her family said in a statement. “We hope the humour, ingenuity and audacity she brought to her work may continue to inspire you as it will do us.”
From sound effects to Saturday nights
Rantzen was born on June 22, 1940, in Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire, the daughter of Henry Rantzen, an electrical engineer, and his wife Katherine. She went to North London Collegiate School and read English at Somerville College, Oxford.
She joined BBC radio as a trainee sound effects assistant and moved into television as a researcher. In 1968 she began presenting on Braden’s Week.
That’s Life!
That’s Life! ran on BBC1 from 1973 to 1994, with Rantzen at its centre throughout. At its peak more than 18 million people watched. It began as a consumer show, mixing complaints about shoddy goods with comic items, but under Rantzen it took on harder subjects: organ donation, safeguarding failures at boarding schools, and child abuse.
Childline
A 1986 programme on child abuse led directly to Childline, a free, confidential phone line for children. The demand on its first night showed how many had nowhere else to turn. Today it runs 12 centres across the UK with around 1,500 volunteer counsellors and handles roughly a million contacts a year.
In 2012 she founded The Silver Line, which launched the following year as a helpline and befriending service for lonely older people. It merged with Age UK in 2019.
She was appointed OBE in 1991 for services to broadcasting and CBE in 2006 for services to children, and was made a Dame in 2015 for her work with both charities.
Life beyond the studio
In December 1977 she married the documentary maker Desmond Wilcox. He died in 2000. They had three children.
She stayed in public view on her own terms, dancing with Anton Du Beke on Strictly Come Dancing in 2004 and going into the jungle for I’m a Celebrity in 2008. In 2010 she stood as an independent in Luton South and won 4.4 per cent of the vote.
The last campaign
Rantzen was diagnosed with lung cancer in January 2023, and by May it had reached stage four. That December she revealed she had joined Dignitas, the Swiss assisted dying clinic, and she spent her remaining years as one of the best-known voices calling for assisted dying to be made legal in Britain. By September 2026 she said she had become too physically fragile to travel to Switzerland.
She died at home. Her family said she was “finally at rest” with her husband, Desmond.