TV cleaning diva Kim Woodburn revealed how, as a young woman in the 60s, she gave birth to a premature stillborn baby — and then tearfully buried him herself in a park.
The star of Channel 4's How Clean Is Your House?, who has died after a short illness, said in her autobiography 40 years after the trauma that her "deep sadness" at the loss had not disappeared, and she would still talk to her son.
She was just 23 and had split up from her boyfriend by whom she had become pregnant.
She was five months' pregnant in February 1966 and at her flat in Liverpool when she went into labour during "the worst night of my life".
In her 2006 autobiography Unbeaten, she said: "My little baby was coming out feet first and I'd never been more frightened or in so much pain in my life.
"As I struggled with what to do next, I found myself taking a washing up bowl from the sink, throwing it on the floor and standing over it. Then I reached for a tea towel, wrapped it around the little foot and gently eased it further out of my body."
She held her lifeless baby in the tea towel, lowered him into the bowl and put it down by her bed.
The following day she went to work at a department store and, that night, decided "in my confused state, I still felt that this was my sole responsibility".
She wrapped the baby in a tea towel, took a spoon from the kitchen drawer and went to her favourite park.
She writes in Unbeaten: "I put the baby on the ground and then knelt down and started digging with the spoon. As I gouged the earth, tears streamed down my face. I brushed them away with my dirty hands.
"When I felt I had dug down deep enough, I lowered my precious little boy in to the hole and wrapped the towel around him before slowly replacing the earth. When the job was done, I still couldn't leave."
The event marked a "huge watershed" in her life, she says, as she changed her name from Pat to the first name of actress Kim Novak, and moved house.
She became a beautician and model, and married Peter, a retired policeman. They had no children.
She was working as a £1,000-a-month housekeeper before finding fame with co-star Aggie in the first series of the cleaning show in 2003.
They scored success across the Atlantic with their upfront approach and customised rubber gloves, and even boosted sales of old-fashioned household cleaning remedies like lemon juice and vinegar.
