If only Helen Tichener had called Denise Robertson…

Even Archers characters need a Wise Woman in their lives and TV agony aunt Denise, 83, who died last week was one of the best.

Denise was kind, knowledgeable and down to earth. She never blamed anyone for getting into a mess – just gave advice on the best way to get out of it.

“If you’ve been in a fine few messes yourself, you realise it’s not so easy to escape problems, ” she said. So different from the baying hordes on Jeremy Kyle.

Because she’d been through the mill herself – twice widowed, once with a young child and very little money - she knew what she was talking about. She’d known debt and despair. Even when she married a second time, she struggled with the thought that she’d never live up to her husband’s first wife (He just loved her to bits and was fiercely protective).

But she was proof that even in a youth-obsessed world of chatrooms and forums, we still need a grown up who’s been around long enough to develop the wisdom to offer advice or the experience to say “This too will pass.”

“I’ve survived. You think when someone close to you dies you’ll never live again.” But she proved herself wrong by having three very happy marriages.

And through it all she wrote and helped people and worked and worked.

“There’s no inspiration like a rates bill or a nine year old needing shoes.”

She loved her family, dogs, collecting china and the North-East. When her TV work took off it would have been much more sensible to move nearer London but she wouldn’t hear of it. She was Sunderland through and through – lately living in East Boldon - hated Newcastle station because it meant she was heading south for work and away from her family and couldn’t wait to get home again.

Yet she was famous on This Morning for staying behind once the cameras were switched off to talk to the people who’d rung in with problems and couldn’t get through. “How could you sleep at night otherwise?” Maybe her overwhelming characteristic – above sharp intelligence, talent, common sense, energy and compassion, was simple kindness.

She was patron of so many charities, especially in the North-East and was far more than just a name on the letter head. She turned up, opened shops, delivered meals on wheels, read at concerts, started races, gave talks, visited schools, nurseries , talked – and listened – to people.

While other patrons would just let charities put out press releases, Denise would pick up the phone herself and talk directly to journalists about causes close to her heart – especially the Bubble Foundation at the Great North Children’s Hospital.

“That’s worth something in the paper, isn’t it?” she’d say, having bothered to ring me at home. And of course it was. You couldn’t resist Denise.

As well as travelling up and down to London for This Morning, she flew over the world – particularly Africa – for charities. And wrote a book a year for many years. Luckily, she didn’t need a lot of sleep. “There are 24 hours in the day and I try and use most of them.”

The two things she didn’t have time for was housework and shopping. With a house full of men (one son and four equally loved stepsons) for years she relied on a niece to help her choose clothes. And only once tried to Hoover when her housekeeper Doris wasn’t there.

“I couldn’t even work out how to get the handle to move,” she said. And possibly never tried again.

She was lucky, she said, that she nearly always woke up excited and full of energy. She was working almost to the end, not bad for 83.

“Sometimes I wonder why I have so much on my plate but it’s better by far than being bored. I couldn’t stand being bored.”

A lovely lady.

• Typically, her family have asked that if anyone would like to give anything in memory of Denise Robertson, that it goes to the Bubble Foundation. www.justgiving.com/bubblefoundation

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In the past few weeks nearly every savings provider written to tell me that rates are “changing” – which you know means going down. Even Ernie’s turned into a skinflint. Premium Bonds, which at least give us some small, vague hope of the odd £25 to cheer our miserable lives are going to be even less likely to give us a prize.

The budget was meant to help savers. Ha! Interest rates are such rubbish that to get £1,000 tax free you’d need around £100,000 in savings. And the extra £5,000 ISA allowance will yield about £60 a year. Yippee. Really life-changing.

In the short term it’s no reward for those who’ve struggled to do the sensible thing.. In the long term, it’s doing nothing to encourage people to save. Why should they? Money in the bank will soon be losing value rather than gaining.

It’s tempting to blow the lot and let the State - ie everyone else – keep us when we’re broke again.

When spending rather than saving seems the more sensible option, then something is definitely out of joint.

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Two years after the government introduced shared parental leave, only 1% of fathers have taken it up.

Surprised? No, nor me.

Devoted and hands-on as many new fathers undoubtedly are, few really want to be in sole charge while their partners are in work.

And not many mothers, who, after all, have done nine months hard labour, will be that keen to give up the chance of a few more weeks at home. If only because it puts off the evil day of finding some smart work clothes that actually fit…

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Women spend longer on the phone than men.

Of course.

That’s because we talk about people rather than football results.