Coronation Street legend Jean Alexander has died in hospital on October 14, just three days after her 90th birthday.
Alexander was known to millions as her character on the show, Hilda Ogden.
She had been taken into hospital on October 11, her birthday, after feeling unwell.
Her niece, Sonia Hearld, 64, while opening up about how she received a phone call from the hospital breaking the bad news, said: “It is such a shock.”
She talked about how just a few days family and friends planned to gather to celebrate Alexander’s 90th.
“She had been feeling a little poorly and had gone in for some tests,” she said.
After a couple of days in hospital she was allowed back to the care home, where she had been looked after since suffering a stroke in 2014.
Born Jean Hodgkinson, she received a 1987 Bafta nomination for best actress and retired from acting in 2012. Her television debut was in the television police series Z-Cars and first appeared in Coronation Street in 1962 as landlady Mrs Webb. She started playing Hilda on July 8, 1964, finally retiring on December 25, 1987.
