the woman who gave british kids a number to call when they had nobody to tell has died at 86. thank you for picking up.

Photo: Damien Everett from Southampton, UK, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

via GB News, The Daily Beast, dpa and PinkNews

In the 12 months reported in June 2019, Childline took 6,014 calls from children who wanted to talk about their sexuality or gender identity, PinkNews reports. Plenty of them probably had no idea who Esther Rantzen was. They just knew the number.

Dame Esther Rantzen, the BBC presenter who founded Childline in 1986, died on Wednesday at her home in the New Forest, surrounded by her family. She was 86. She had lung cancer, The Daily Beast reported.

"Our adored mother Dame Esther Rantzen died today," her children Miriam, Rebecca and Joshua Wilcox said in a statement carried by dpa and GB News. "Her legacy of compassion and understanding will live on in her charities Childline and the Silverline, and through those of us who were lucky enough to love and be loved by her." And, the line that does it: "She was our sunshine."

who esther rantzen was

For 21 years, from 1973 to 1994, she fronted That's Life! on the BBC, a consumer show that British readers of a certain age are nodding at right now. Everyone else, trust us, it was huge.

Childline came out of that show, a free line for children in danger or distress, and she kept going: The Silver Line for older people, a damehood in 2015, and a long campaign for assisted dying. She said she planned to "buzz off to Zurich," dpa reports, and later that she had become "too physically fragile to make the journey." She did not live to see the law change in Britain. GB News reports that MPs voted down an assisted dying bill 286 to 270 about two weeks before she died, a defeat she called a "tragic day."

what she did for queer kids

Childline added pages on gender identity in 2015, according to PinkNews, which also dug up a 1996 episode of her talk show Esther devoted to coming out, with Right Said Fred's Richard Fairbrass among the guests. In the 1980s she put transgender people on television, and one viewer, Rona Rees, later described seeing it as the "eureka" moment that led to her own transition.

Her own words on it, from 2019, as PinkNews reported them: "If we create a taboo around them, that can make children feel guilty, rejected and in some cases has even led to depression and even suicide."

That is not an ally press release. That is a woman who had met the kids. "I've met young people who were desperately unhappy because they couldn't talk to anyone," she said at the time. The demand has not gone anywhere: Childline held 2,457 counseling sessions on sexuality or gender identity in the latest figures PinkNews cites, and 43% were about coming out.

Kim Leadbeater, the MP behind the assisted dying bill, called her "a strong, warm and compassionate woman and a fighter to the end," per GB News. Chris Sherwood, chief executive of the children's charity NSPCC, said "we will ensure her extraordinary legacy and commitment to helping children lives on for many years to come."

Somewhere tonight a kid is dialing that number for the first time. Thank you, Esther.