LYME REGIS: Actress Lynda Bellingham touched many lives – including many people in Lyme Regis.

She visited the town in 2012 to do some filming and one of the places she visited was Rikey Austin Bear Shop.

Rikey said: “She was lovely, she was actually here filming with Paddy my husband and she was doing something like Lynda Bellingham’s My Tasty Travels or something like that. They worked together for a few days and hunted for a few fossils.

“She actually did quite a bit in Lyme and I think cooked with the lifeboat crew.

“She was so sweet.

“We have been quite lucky, we have met Kirsty Allsop and Lynda Bellingham and Julia Bradbury and you always kind of wonder what they are going to be like in real life but particularly Lynda and Kirsty have both been just the sweetest people.

“She was a real person, she was very caring and very interested in people and warm.

“Occasionally the world loses somebody and you just think the world is not as nice a place now.

“There are people who make the world more interesting and she was one of them. She was just a very caring person,”

The actress visited the town with Plymouth-based TV production company Two Four during Lifeboat Week in the summer of 2012.

Bridport and Lyme Regis News:

Lyme lifeboat crew member Mark Gage, above, showed Lynda the finer points of the lifeboat and James Rice demonstrated how to put on the lifeboat crew gear.

Harbour master Grahame Forshaw gave Lynda a guided tour of the harbour aboard his launch.

The programme was scheduled to end with Lynda cooking a meal for members of the crew on the beach by the Powerboat Club.

Lynda Bellingham’s husband Michael Pattemore, who once ran the Bridport nightclub Scruples, had decided to bury his beloved wife in Crewkerne cemetery, where the couple have a burial plot.

Her funeral service will be on Monday November 3 at noon at St Bartholomew’s Church, Crewkerne.