LONDON – British agony aunt, writer and broadcaster Claire Rayner has died at the age of 79.
The patients’ rights campaigner, who died on Monday, knew her death was imminent over the weekend and told her relatives she wanted her last words to be: “Tell David Cameron that if he screws up my beloved NHS I’ll come back and bloody haunt him.”
Des Rayner, her husband of 53 years, said: “I have lost my best friend and my soulmate. I am immensely proud of her.”
Ms Rayner never recovered from emergency intestinal surgery she had in May this year and died in hospital near her home in Harrow, northwest London.
She started her career working as a nurse. Her husband paid tribute to her yesterday, saying: “Through her work she helped hundreds of thousands of people and doubtless, by talking frankly about the importance of safe sex in the 80s when almost nobody else would discuss it, helped to save thousands of lives.”
Baroness Helena Kennedy said: “Claire was one of my closest friends. She was an extraordinary woman – passionate, committed, warm and exuberant.
“The key thing about Claire was that she was a campaigner to her toes – her mission was to improve the lot of others and she did it with great humility and common sense.”
Claire Berenice Rayner was born to Jewish parents in January 1931 in east London. Her early life in Stepney spanned the difficult years of the second World War, during which she was once buried alive for 28 hours in rubble.
She was known to her parents as “the problem child” and as an evacuee ran away from four separate families during the war.
It was while on maternity leave to have her first child that she became a freelance journalist. She became a household name as an agony aunt on problem pages in Britain’s best-selling newspapers and also made numerous appearances on television and radio. She was also a successful author, writing more than 90 books.
Her no-fuss attitude to health matters led her to being asked by the BBC to demonstrate how to put on a condom, and being one of the first people to advertise sanitary towels.
Ms Rayner, who wrote for the Sun, Sunday Mirrorand Women's Own, will be given a humanist funeral service. – (PA)