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LINDA ROBSON: My shattering breakdown. In a soul-baring memoir, Loose Women star describes how she became so addicted to alcohol she was reduced to a mortifying habit and was banned from looking after her grandchildren

I was the last person you'd expect it to happen to. Not me, Linda Robson. I was one of life's strong people. I soldiered on, no matter what. Whatever the world threw at me, I could cope with it.

It possibly dates back to the anxiety I began to suffer after the horrific murder in 2008 of 16-year-old Ben Kinsella, a close family friend who’d grown up with my kids. Ruth Langsford had suggested replacing it with elderflower water but I wasn’t keen on that, so I’d make myself smoothies and cups of tea at 10 pm, which was the time I’d usually be breaking out the booze. Star, on the Loose Women Tour Live in Newcastle last year with Jane Moore, Denise Welch and Charlene White, said she used to eat oranges to cover up the smell of alcohol

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