Lynda Bellingham talks to Hannah Stephenson about her new book, Lost And Found.

ACTRESS, Loose Women panellist and one-time Oxo mum Lynda Bellingham has had more drama in her life than most of us have had hot dinners.

Her first two destructive marriages have been well documented over the years.

But now she has brought more skeletons out of her cupboard in her autobiography, Lost And Found, in which she reveals that she was adopted and charts her search for her birth mother, Marjorie Moorhouse, a bornagain Christian from Canada whose lover, a ship’s crewman, deserted her when he discovered she was pregnant.

The actress, 61, says it was having her own children (Michael and Robert, now aged 26 and 22), which caused her to seek out Marjorie through the Missing Children’s Network.

“When you become pregnant, you are asked all those questions of inherited diseases and health histories.

Added to that were general feelings of inadequacy – I’ve always struggled with selfworth and wanting people to love me.”

Having spent an idyllic childhood in Buckinghamshire with her adoptive parents, pilot Don Bellingham and his wife, Ruth, Lynda felt guilty about contacting Marjorie, even though her parents had told her she was adopted.

“I felt very disloyal,” she admits.

“They were absolutely fantastic and it was only over time, through talking to my Lynda Bellingham: has always wanted to be loved sisters, that I realised how upset they were. They did feel threatened and hurt.”

She flew to Edmonton, Canada, to meet Marjorie for the first time in 1993, more than 40 years after her adoption.

Lynda worked hard to assume a happy relationship with her mother: “When we were alone it was very hard because she liked to hold my hand and just gaze at me. She wanted me to call her Mum, but I just couldn’t. It would be a betrayal to Mum and Dad.”

They didn’t see much of each other after that initial meeting, although Marjorie met Lynda’s adoptive parents and her sons and they always kept in touch.

Currently on a national tour of Calendar Girls, baring all every night, she’s clearly much more relaxed than she used to be: “From being adopted and having no selfworth, I go on stage every night and feel this wave of love from the audience. I feel I’m part of a huge group of wonderful women.”