Secret chats with Brucie helped cancer patient cope

BRUCE Forsyth secretly helped a terminal cancer patient cope with the final few years of her illness, it emerged yesterday.

The Strictly Come Dancing co-host telephoned breast cancer patient Gloria Park once a week for a chat.

Sometimes they would speak for more than an hour.

He was asked to contact her by Marie Curie Cancer Care nurses, who had asked Mrs Park what was her greatest wish.

She told them she wanted to speak to the television presenter, now 81, star of The Generation Game and Play Your Cards Right.

And although Forsyth did not know her before they first spoke, he rang her every week until she died in 1997, aged 56.

William Park, her son, told reporters: "She was really ill in hospital. There were some days when she was so down that she didn't want to speak at all.

"But he would talk to her on the phone, for an hour or an hour and 20 minutes, just to cheer her up. I think that kept her going."

He said he believed they spoke about what the entertainer had been up to.

When Mrs Park, of Darlington, County Durham, died, Forsyth declined an invitation to her funeral, because he did not want the occasion to be about him. He instead sent flowers.