EastEnders’ Cheryl Fergison reveals Barbara Windsor paid for her mortgage as she struggled to pay the bills while battling stage three womb cancer
EastEnders‘ Cheryl Fergison has revealed Dame Barbara Windsor paid for her mortgage after she struggled to pay the bills when she was diagnosed with stage two womb cancer.
The actress, 58, who played Heather Trot on the BBC soap, appeared on Loose Women on Wednesday where she discussed the moment she was diagnosed back in 2015, after going public with her secret health battle last week.
Only last year, Cheryl was given the all clear.
Cheryl revealed the huge gesture her friend Dame Barbara, who was the iconic Peggy Mitchell on EastEnders, did to help her out before she passed away in 2020.
Cheryl told the panel: ‘Barbara Windsor and Paul O’Grady all helped me.
‘I remember Barbs saying: “Come on you’ve got to come round my house”. So I went there and to the toilet.
‘I explained everything that was going on and I was going to have my operation very soon. Her husband Scott got his chequebook out.
‘She went: “So how much are your bills then?” She wrote a cheque out to help me pay for my medical bills and my mortgage.’
Speaking about why she finally decided to go public with her health battle, she said: ‘I kept it quiet for a long time to process it. If you don’t work you earn no money so I had to put on a smile and get on with it.
‘For me it’s about letting women know they should listen to their bodies.
‘We don’t have time for ourselves. When something happens you need to act on it. I wouldn’t have been alive if I hadn’t taken action.’
Cheryl, whose husband Yassim al-Jemoni and son Alex, 24, were in the live studio audience, revealed her symptoms began when she started experience backache. Worried, she went to the doctors.
She said: ‘I had a very bad backache and then I started to spot blood. I thought this is a bit strange, because I shouldn’t be doing this at this particular point. I’d have a smear – and that was clear.
‘The smear was clear and then it was about three months later that I got this spotting and I got this backache, and it was terrible in the lower back. And we all think, ‘Oh, I’ve got backache’ and take tablets but this just didn’t feel right.”
‘In my head, I’m thinking you’ve got to go and sort this out. And literally within those three months between having the smear, and going back to the doctor again, getting seen again, having a small biopsy, they told me that I had stage two cancer, in three months.
‘We don’t normally have a smear for another three years so, what I’m saying is, listen to your body, go to the doctor and do it. It doesn’t matter that you’re pestering them, it doesn’t matter because you know yourself and it saves lives.’
Cheryl went public with her health battle last week. She told Ok! Magazine: ‘There were some dark moments, especially at night, when I thought, ‘Am I going to die? Am I going to leave my husband without a wife, my son without a mum?’
‘But the time is right to talk about it all now. I’m hoping my story might empower other women.
‘I’ve been through a lot but I’m still here. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.’
She received her diagnosis after attending a regular smear test, which came back clear.
But after she started experiencing back pain and spotting blood which she knew wasn’t normal.
She then went to see her GP and she was referred for tests and a biopsy at a local hospital in Kent.
Four months after that she received the news she had stage two womb cancer.
Cheryl has now told how hearing the doctor’s diagnosis was like an ‘out of body experience’.
She said: ‘I was in absolute shock; stunned to the core. I couldn’t believe the doctor was talking about me.’
Following X-rays, Cheryl was also recommended for a full hysterectomy just weeks later.
She told how this hit her hard in case she had wanted to have another child – after her chances of doing so were already reduced due to an early menopause.
Cheryl now lives with her husband of 12 years Yassine. She has a son Alex from her first marriage to Jamshed Saddiqi.
She had only just married Yassine when the diagnosis came and felt sadness that ‘any thought of having a child together had been taken away’.
The star shared the devastating news with a few pals in the industry at the time, including Dame Barbara, June Brown, and Steve McFadden.
She also confided in entertainment icons Paul and Julian Clary.
Her sharing the diagnosis comes after earlier this month Cheryl revealed she was rushed to hospital, after being left ‘in complete agony‘.
She released a lengthy statement sharing that she was treated for an infection that left her in huge pain, but after six antibiotic drips, she was soon ‘home and on the road to recovery.’
In her statement, published by The Mirror, Cheryl shared that her 24-hour stint in A&E was an ‘eye-opening experience,’ adding that she has been ‘in and out of hospital’ for the past nine years due to some ‘serious health conditions.’
Thanking the staff at Blackpool & Victoria Teaching Hospital, Cheryl said: ‘I was treated for an infection with six hourly antibiotics IV drips and at times was in complete agony.
‘I’m glad to say the infection is subsiding and I am now I am home and on the road to recovery. My family have been by my side throughout this whole ordeal.
‘Spending 24 hours in A&E was more than an eye opening experience. The pure abuse and overrun conditions that our health workers have to endure was painful to watch.
‘The lack of appreciation that was showed by some people within my time there was very difficult to watch.’
Cheryl continued that her previous health battles had been ‘very scary’ and ‘unsettling,’ and described the NHS as ‘horribly broken’ and ‘neglected.’
She ended her statement by saying that she looked forward to ‘getting back on her feet again’, and returning to work with her son at Whispers Cafe in Lytham.
Just before she had said in a clip: ‘Hi everyone, I’ve just spent the last 24 hours in A&E at Blackpool Victoria hospital. I’ve seen things in the last 24 hours I can’t unsee. I’ve been in complete agony.
‘I’ve been made a million times better by the angels that are all of the NHS staff which I wanna thank, like, big time. When people say they don’t get paid enough – they really don’t get paid enough.
‘We’ve got a broken system. It’s gone to pot. It’s shot. But it’s still amazing and we still have it – just, by a thread.’
She added: ‘I wanna firstly say a huge thank you. I’m a lot better and when you sit for 24 hours in a chair in an A&E department being shipped off every six hours to go and get an IV, antibiotic drips, and come back again…’
Cheryl’s followers flooded the comments section with well wishes and supportive messages for the soap star.
They shared: ‘Oh Cheryl, bless you. Hope you’re feeling better and fully recover quickly. God bless; Omg hope you ok now. Sending hugs.’
‘So sorry x hope you’re feeling better x look after yourself x rest !!!! And hope you don’t have to go through that again; Do hope you’re ok? Sending healing’.
‘Get well very soon, take it easy; Get well soon and thank goodness that the NHS is still battling on despite all that it’s going through.’
Cheryl came to fame playing loveable Heather Trott on EastEnders for five years, before being viciously killed by Ben Mitchell in 2012.
Her character’s death came at the decision of the soap bosses, not Cheryl herself, who previous admitted she burst into tears after being told.
She told Best magazine: ‘It was a bittersweet day. What you get with one hand, you get taken away with another!
‘When they told me Heather was for the chop, (the boss) had to get me a tissue. Sometimes a character is sacrificed to make other stories work. I get it. I knew it was going to come but it was still a shock.’
A source told The Sun at the time about her exit: ‘Heather’s character has been hugely popular over the years, but the decision has been taken to cut her out of the show before viewers tire of her.’
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