Actress and presenter.

Born: May 31, 1948; Died: October 19, 2014

Lynda Bellingham, who has died of colon cancer aged 66, was an actress and television presenter who was most famous for her warm and mumsy roles. She played Mrs James Herriot in the television drama All Creatures Great And Small and James Bolam's partner in the sit-com Second Thoughts; but, most famously, she was the mother in the adverts for Oxo stock cubes, a role that, for her, was double-edged: it made her one of the most famous actresses in the country but also prevented her from doing the serious work she craved.

In her later years, she was better known as a presenter than an actress, appearing on the daytime chat show Loose Women and on Strictly Come Dancing, but for more than 40 years, she had a solid career on television.

Her first big television role was in the soap opera General Hospital as the fat nurse Hilda Price (under some heavy padding) which led to roles in Z Cars, The Sweeney, Shoestring, and The Bill, as well as All Creatures. In the 1980s, she also had a role in Doctor Who, playing the judge at the Doctor's trial, and in the 1970s appeared in one of the Confessions Of ... sex comedies, which were produced by her then husband Greg Smith.

It was the Oxo ads, though, that dominated her career. When she was first offered the role in the early 1980s, she turned it down, largely because, at the time, doing adverts was considered a no-no for anyone who wanted to be considered a serious actress. Eventually, her husband and her agent persuaded her to do it, and the adverts, which featured Bellingham as a redoubtable mother forever cooking dinner for her family, ran from 1983 until 1999 and won a number of industry awards.

Bellingham always had mixed feelings about the ads: they gave her financial security but she also believed they damaged her credibility. She also felt she was living a lie: in the ads, she was a loving, and beloved, mother in a happy family; but in real life, she was in an unhappy and violent relationship.

For most of the time, she was also terrified that the truth about her real marriage, to the restaurateur Nunzio Peluso, would emerge and, after the ads ended, she won an injunction against Peluso and later gave talks to women's groups about the abuse she suffered.

Bellingham believed one of the problems she faced in relationships and in her career was low self-esteem, which she traced back to her early life. She was born in Canada, but was put up for adoption by her mother Marjorie Moorhouse, who became pregnant after a brief affair with a crewman on a sailing ship. After being adopted by a British couple Don and Ruth Bellingham, she grew up in Aylesbury, but Bellingham sometimes struggled to fit in and was a difficult teenager.

But she was also determined and once she decided she wanted to be an actress, passionately pursued the ambition, winning a place at the Central School Of Speech And Drama by refusing to accept no for an answer. She then took the traditional route into repertory theatre, taking on small roles and also working as an assistant stage manager (her first appearance in a professional theatre programme was the unpromising mis-print "Lyfta Bellingham").

After a number of small roles in television dramas, in the early 1970s, she appeared in the musical Salad Days, which was Cameron Mackintosh's first production, and was engaged for a time to his brother, the musician Robert. But her big break was in 1972 when she won a part in General Hospital, the UK's first daytime soap. She spent a year in the show even though it was a hard, six-days-a-week slog.

After the break-up of her relationship with Robert Mackintosh, she became involved with Greg Smith, a young producer who was trying to set up a film called Confessions Of A Window Cleaner, based on the books by Christopher Wood. It was not a happy relationship, although Bellingham did appear in one of the films. As the relationship with Smith deteriorated, she began to drink heavily and sometimes struggled with alcohol.

By the mid-1970s she was working steadily in television, often in crime series. She appeared in Within These Walls, a proto-Bad Girls about a women's prison starring Googie Withers, and had a guest role in The Professionals. She also appeared in the film version of The Sweeney.

However, she was only occasionally playing the more serious parts she longed to do. In 1979, she played Ruth Isaacs in Mackenzie, the follow-up to the celebrated drama Bouquet Of Barbed Wire, but it was not a ratings success, although she did also appear in a BBC adaptation of Martin Chuzzlewit, and in My Uncle Silas with Albert Finney.

In the mid-1980s, she joined the cast of All Creatures Great And Small, playing Helen Herriot, and stayed for three series. Then, in 1986, she played the Inquisitor in the 14-part Doctor Who story The Trial Of A Time Lord. The Inquisitor presided over the Doctor's trial but spent the entire time sitting behind a desk. Remembering the part, she said: "I took my seat with great aplomb and stayed there for 13 episodes, at the end of which I rose from my chair and left the courtroom with great aplomb."

Bellingham's other big success in the 1980s was the comedy Second Thoughts opposite James Bolam, in which she and Bolam played a middle-aged couple dealing with ex-partners and step-children. It later led to a spin-off called Faith In The Future.

She also worked on the stage although, again, she never found the critical success she wanted. Between 2008 and 2012, she appeared in a touring production of Calendar Girls, and at the Royal Court appeared in a play called Sugar Mummies, about older women going to the Caribbean for sex . It was appearing on Loose Women to talk about the play that led to her association with that programme.

In the 1990s, she decided to track down her birth mother and stayed in touch with her until Marjorie's death. She later gave talks for Barnardo's about adoption and was also an ambassador for the Alzheimer's Society.

She revealed last year she had been diagnosed with cancer and last month announced she had chosen to stop having chemotherapy. Earlier this year, she was made an OBE in the New Year's Honours List.

In 2008, she married for a third time, to mortgage broker, Michael Pattemore, who survives her. She is also survived by her sons Michael and Robbie.