Celebrity Esther Rantzen

Veteran broadcaster Dame Esther Rantzen has died at the age of 86, sending this incredibly moving moment of TV history viral again

Poke Reporter. Updated October 1st, 2026

Add as preferred source on Google
Add as preferred source on Google

Dame Esther Rantzen has died at the age of 86, almost six decades after beginning a career in broadcasting that would see her become a household name.

She gained fame as the presenter of That’s Life!, the consumer affairs magazine series that used humour, as well as top-class investigative journalism, to present important and less serious issues to its viewers and combat fraudulent practices.

The programme’s features included quirky items from the news, suggestively shaped vegetables sent in by viewers, humorous poetry from the comedian Cyril Fletcher, and entertaining vox pops.

It was partly Dame Esther’s encounters with child abuse stories through That’s Life! which led her to go on to found the Childline charity, which acted as a literal lifeline for abused and otherwise struggling children.

Having been diagnosed with terminal lung cancer, she would become a vocal campaigner for changes to the law to allow assisted dying in the UK, which led to the bill which was once again rejected just a few weeks ago.

News of her death led to an avalanche of tributes across all media, including these.

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

One of the thousands of tributes came from the Labour peer Sir Alf Dubs, who came to the UK at the age of six in 1939 from what was then Czechoslovakia, travelling on the Kindertransport arranged by Nicholas Winton.

The intervention of Nicholas Winton to arrange the rehousing in the UK of 669 children fleeing from the Nazis was the subject of arguably the greatest moment in That’s Life! history, and Dame Esther’s death caused people to share the clip again.

Even with a catalogue of ground-breaking TV to remember her by, it’s fitting that the founder of Childline and one of the most renowned Jewish figures in TV should be so widely associated with such a moving tribute to the capacity of humans to support others.

Dame Esther Rantzen. 1940 to 1986. May her memory be a blessing.

Image Screengrab