This Morning agony aunt Deidre Sanders returned to the ITV daytime studio on Tuesday morning after she emotionally announced her beloved husband Rick had died.
Rick, Deidre's husband of 55 years, died just before Christmas last month and just days after the daytime TV favourite had been awarded an MBE in the New Year Honours List for 2023.
Deirdre told hosts Holly Willoughby and Phillip Schofield that Rick knew about her recognition, which she received a call about prior to his death, and that he even made a joke about it.
Phillip introduced the 77-year-old as Deirdre MBE, before co-host Holly congratulated the longtime journalist.
Deirdre said she feels ‘honoured’ by the recognition as Holly replied: “It's very deserved as well.”
Phillip added: “It's a nice bright light in quite a sad time for you,” which she agreed it was.
She said: “It's been very much a rollercoaster with losing my husband. But he did know about the MBE before he died, so that was lovely. He could tease me about it.”
Phillip said: “We’re very sorry and we’re glad you’re here,” to which she thanked him and said it felt good to be back at work.
Deirdre first announced her bereavement on a video call to the programme at the start of this year as she spoke with hosts Andi Peters and Josie Gibson.
She said: “A special thing for me was, a lot of you know my husband died just before Christmas on December 16th.
“But this call came through about a week before he died so that was really special. I could share it with him and say what had happened.
“I was with Rick for 55 years, so that was really great. He was always a great tease so he had to get in a few digs first. But he did the next day tell my daughter and tell me just how proud he was, so that made it extra, extra special.”
She continued: “It was lovely that we could share that, I think had he died before I got that news, it would have always just been a bittersweet thing so it’s lovely that we could share that.”
It had been a challenging year for the agony aunt after she revealed in September that she had been diagnosed with breast cancer during the summer.
A month later she returned to the show and confirmed she was ‘really good’ as she continued treatment.
She told the hosts at the time: “I’m really good, so I had this teeny, tiny cancer, which was spotted on a mammogram, I’ve had surgery, it’s all out, it’s gone.”
This Morning airs weekdays at 10am on ITV1 and ITV Hub.
