Esther Rantzen, broadcaster who founded Childline and The Silver Line, dies at 86

Dame Esther Rantzen, the British broadcaster and campaigner, died on 30 September 2026 at the age of 86, her family announced. She had been living with lung cancer since 2023. Her children, Miriam, Rebecca and Joshua Wilcox, said her legacy of compassion and understanding would live on through the charities she founded, Childline and The Silver Line.

Rantzen started at the BBC as a sound effects assistant in radio and trained as a producer and director in 1968. From 1973 to 1994 she produced and presented That's Life!, a Sunday evening mix of consumer investigations and light-hearted items that at its peak drew around 20 million viewers. Alongside the comic segments, the programme campaigned on child abuse, organ donation and playground safety. Its most-watched moment came in 1988, when Sir Nicholas Winton, who had organised the rescue of hundreds of mostly Jewish children from Czechoslovakia before the Second World War, was introduced in the studio audience to some of the people he had saved.

Her most lasting achievement was Childline, which she launched in 1986 after a That's Life! investigation revealed how many children had no one to turn to. The free, confidential helpline has since counselled millions of young people in the United Kingdom about abuse, bullying, family breakdown and mental health, and became part of the NSPCC in 2006. In 2012 and 2013 she created The Silver Line, a round-the-clock helpline for older people facing loneliness and isolation, drawing on her own experience after the death of her husband, the documentary maker Desmond Wilcox, in 2000. She was made a dame in 2015 for services to children and older people.

Rantzen spoke often about her Jewish identity, telling the Jewish Chronicle that being Jewish was a central part of who she was. In her final years she also campaigned publicly on end-of-life choices. Tributes came from across British public life; the BBC's director-general called her a legend of British broadcasting whose contribution to public life was immeasurable.