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The Loose Women panellist opens up on her marriage split and alcohol issues battle
Linda Robson is known for her honesty and down-to-earth demeanour, but in her new book, Truth Be Told: Tales From A Baggy Mouth, she’s revealed the true scale of a heartbreaking few years which have seen her on suicide watch, battling alcoholism, and dealing with her marriage split. As life fell apart around her, she was even banned from looking after her beloved granddaughters Betsy and Lila. Five years on from her widely-publicised breakdown, the Loose Women panellist – who has been teetotal for several years and off medication since 2020 – is finally getting “back to the old Linda”.
Now mid-divorce from her husband-of- 33-years, Mark Dunford, she revealed in a recent interview that it’s not her broken marriage that haunts her the most, but her guilt.
“I gave my family the worst time. I still find it hard to forgive myself for that,” she said. “I’d always been the ‘strong’ one. Suddenly, they all had to look after me. I felt so bad for what I’d done to everyone who loved me.”
In 2017, Linda’s relationship with alcohol escalated from enjoying the odd glass of wine to a bottle a night. “There’s no planet where this is fine,” she wrote.
The TV star, 65, briefly went cold turkey after Loose Women producers asked her if she would embark on a sugar-free diet and document her progress on the show. However, the lifestyle overhaul had adverse effects. Linda was prescribed diazepam as she was unable to sleep, and her OCD reached “another level”. After curbing the nightly bottle of wine, Linda dropped to a size 8, but she was struggling inside.
She wrote, “Desperate for a solution, I went back to drinking, hoping to find some peace there. I drank until I passed out. As I sank into what I now know was a deep depression, passing out was exactly what I wanted. I didn’t want to get through the rest of the day.” In a bid to conceal the smell of alcohol on her breath, Linda would take a toothbrush and toothpaste with her everywhere, but she didn’t kid her family, who quickly intervened.
Linda – who is mum to Lauren, 40, from her relationship with Tony Tyler, and Louis, 32, and Bobbie, 28, with estranged husband Mark, recalled, “My family had to go round to our local shop and tell the man he wasn’t to serve me alcohol anymore. So I started going to a shop a bit further away where they didn’t know me. In the end, the family had to start locking me in the house, which was the only way to stop me. I know that sounds like drastic action, but they were at the end o
