The founder of Slimming World, Margaret Miles-Bramwell, has died aged 76.
Miles-Bramwell set up the company as a weight loss meeting at a church hall in Alfreton, Derbyshire in 1969. It expanded to a nationwide network of 10,000 groups and Slimming World magazine became a referral option for NHS GPs.
She based Slimming World’s headquarters in Somercotes, also in Derbyshire, where today it employs about 400 people.
Speaking about its foundation in 2009, Miles-Bramwell said: “There was a little bit of help around at the time for slimmers. But I suppose that sort of help, group therapy help, had only been around for a few years then.
“So my dream was to have a club that really did help people achieve what they wanted to do, achieve their dreams – not my dream, their dreams. So my dream was to have a slimming club that was light years ahead of anything else that was around at the time.”
Miles-Bramwell died on Sunday morning at her home in Mallorca, surrounded by family, Slimming World said. It paid tribute to a “a much-loved mum, grandmother and great-grandmother”.
The company’s managing director, Lisa Salmon, said: “Margaret steered her ship in the way she lived her life – with a generous spirit, passionate conviction, a wicked (and rebellious!) sense of humour and a fierce belief in doing the right thing. Our job now is to continue to keep her legacy alive by doing the very same thing.”
Miles-Bramwell was born to an unmarried nurse in London in 1948 and was adopted by a couple in South Normanton, Derbyshire. She wrote in her autobiography, Wild Women Do, that they shunned her when she became pregnant as a teenager.
She was awarded an OBE in 2009 for services to the health of the British public.
As well as founding Slimming World, she owned the boat-building company Pearl Yachts and a Mallorca entertainment venue, Son Amar.
She is survived by her children from her first husband, Roy Miles, a daughter, Claire, and two sons, Dominic and Benjamin. Her second husband, Tony Whittaker, died in 2021.
