BABS’ HEYDAY
Barbara Windsor hinted Alzheimer’s battle last year, revealing she quit the stage because she wanted people ‘to remember her like she was’
DAME Barbara Windsor hinted at her at Alzheimer's battle in an interview last year.
The 80-year-old’s husband Scott Mitchell revealed the devastating diagnosis in The Sun today.
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In December 2017, Barbara admitted she was starting to feel her age and said she had stopped performing because she wanted people to remember her in her heyday.
She told : “My life is different now. It took me a long time to get used to it because all of a sudden you look at your age and go ‘Oh Christ, I’m getting older.’
“I do like to perform but I don’t do it so much now. I suddenly thought ‘No, I won’t do it now.
“Let them see me in Carry On films and they’ll still think I’m like that.”
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Barbara, who starred in nine Carry On films, slowed down her work schedule in previous years and said it was becoming harder to learn her scripts.
She told : “You hit an age when you have to study that bit harder – unless you are June Brown who, at 84, can pick it up and learn it in a second.
“That is a bit of old age I have got, scattiness. I just forget things.”
Barbara’s struggle to learn her lines is what her husband Scott believes is the reason EastEnders bosses wrote her out of the soap.
Dame Barbara Windsor 'can't be left home alone' reveals The Sun's Jane Moore
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Scott, 52, explained: “Barbara contacted the Executive producer Dominic Treadwell-Collins to make the suggestion and, at first, he said, ‘I can’t kill an iconic character’.
“So I went to see him and, without giving the full situation, confided that she was really struggling to learn lines and wouldn’t ever be coming back again after this.
EastEnders legend Barbara Windsor on leaving the soap
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“I asked that she have an autocue on set, just as a safety net. But in the end, she just used it to refresh her memory between takes. If you saw the Peggy death scenes, you could see she wasn’t reading it.
“Ironically, I think it’s some of the best work she ever did. I was incredibly proud of her.”
Barbara and Scott's world was turned upside down when the star was diagnosed with Alzheimer's in April 2014, though the talent manager admitted her condition grew increasingly worse in 2016.
Scott revealed Barbara - who bowed out of the soap in 2016 - first started showing signs of memory loss when filming soap EastEnders in 2009.
EastEnders: Barbara Windsor first episode as Peggy Mitchell
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