Coleen Nolan breaks down in tears on Loose Women return after sister Linda's funeral

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Blackpool TV star Coleen Nolan returned to Loose Women yesterday and was struggling to hold back tears as she spoke about the grief of losing her sister, Linda Nolan.

Linda, a member of The Nolans alongside Coleen and their siblings, passed away at 65 after a long battle with breast cancer.

She was laid to rest on Saturday at St. Paul's Church in Blackpool - the seaside town Linda had made her home -with a service that Coleen described as "a beautiful day".

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Speaking on the ITV show on Tuesday, Coleen, 59, admitted she was having “meltdown moments” as she tried to navigate life without her sister.

"It’s difficult to say, it's still too soon. You have great moments and then you have absolute meltdown moments and they come out the blue," she said, her voice shaking.

Blackpool's Coleen Nolan got emotional on Loose Women yesterday as she spoke about losing her sister, Linda.Blackpool's Coleen Nolan got emotional on Loose Women yesterday as she spoke about losing her sister, Linda.
Blackpool's Coleen Nolan got emotional on Loose Women yesterday as she spoke about losing her sister, Linda. | coleen_nolan on Instagram

She recalled how Linda had personally chosen her coffin just months earlier.

"The funeral – in her pink, shiny coffin … which she picked out on Instagram four months ago … she said, 'If I die, that’s the one I want.' It was a beautiful day, if you can say that, for Linda. She would have absolutely loved it, and the weather was beautiful."

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Coleen also thanked the public for the love the family received, and how much it had meant to them.

She said: "People you never met before are sending just the most amazing messages, cards, flowers to the whole family. And you probably think, 'They don’t even read it,' but we read as many as we can. I can’t tell you how much it means to us. That really helped.”

Despite the pain, Coleen said she knew she had to return to work, acknowledging that Linda wouldn’t have wanted her to stop.

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"It's just hard. Because there was a time where I thought, 'Do I go back? Is it too soon?' And then … you have to. Because life goes on," she said.

Coleen also wanted to send a message to others battling cancer, saying that Linda’s passing wasn’t a reason to give up.

"Linda has had this for 20 years, and I think that the one thing she'd want to say is that she wouldn’t want anybody that was still going through this horrendous disease to go, 'Oh, I may as well give up, because it got her in the end.' Because actually, it wasn't that that got her in the end, she got flu and pneumonia.""She was a massive force in our family, and it feels like such a hole. And because I'm the baby … and then it was Bernie, Linda and then it went up. And now it's me, and then the age gap's quite far," she said.

The Blackpool born star also recalled a quiet moment with her siblings, where the reality of Linda’s absence hit hard.

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"We're all still really close but the six of us in the car – you know my sisters and my two brothers – my brother just went, 'And then there were six,' and it was just like … I was looking at them, and honestly, I was like, 'I can’t do this anymore,' but you have to."

Coleen concluded by thanking her fans for their letters of support and thanking the nurses at the hospital and hospice that treated Linda for their amazing care.

Elsewhere, another Nolan sister- Anne - has spoken publicly for the first time since Linda’s funeral too.

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Anne told ITV's Good Morning Britain yesterday that Linda "would have loved her funeral", and said if "she could have arranged it herself, she would have arranged it like that".

When asked about the memorial being open to anyone to come, she said: "That's what Linda wanted. We were doing it for her really.

"It was really strange because on the way to the church in the funeral cars, as we arrived there was loads, hundreds of people outside the church."

"And my sister Maureen started crying. I mean, we were all very emotional, but she started crying because of all the people that were there. She said, 'I'm so glad because Linda would've been so disappointed if all these people hadn't turned up'.".

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The Nolan Sisters (clockwise from top left) Denise, Maureen, Linda, Anne and Bernie. Credit: PAThe Nolan Sisters (clockwise from top left) Denise, Maureen, Linda, Anne and Bernie. Credit: PA
The Nolan Sisters (clockwise from top left) Denise, Maureen, Linda, Anne and Bernie. Credit: PA | PA

Anne also said: "It was very emotional, very sad, but on the other hand it was kind of joyous as well ... she picked her own coffin, the pink glittery coffin was her idea."

She added that Nolan also wanted them to wear the Spanish mantilla veils, but after ordering them the family thought that "she might've been having a laugh there".

"I don't really think she wanted us to wear mantillas, so we didn't wear them," she added.

"But that was the kind of humour she had."

She also called Linda a "forceful" and "big, big character in our family and in lots of people's lives".

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