Last night Linda Lusardi's beloved husband Sam Kane sparked grave concerns for her welfare, revealing coronavirus had taken the Page 3 star to 'death's door'.
Sam - who also caught the disease but has been released from hospital - told fans he'd been separated from Linda, 61, who is still battling the 'cruel, vile, remorseless, relentless, dark sickness' surrounded by doctors.
Revealing how his wife of 21 years had been 'to hell and back', Sam, 51, begged others to take the danger seriously.
Describing the illness on Facebook, he wrote: "It was like three hands. One that’s strangling you. One pushing your face down as it does. The other one ripping your heart out of your chest and it just doesn’t stop... for days.
"Please stop going out. Passing this around will mean it just takes longer till we’re back to normal. Please stay safe people."
But with Linda now making 'small steps' towards recovery, Sam will no doubt be counting down the days before they are reunited.
After all, since meeting in panto in 1996, Linda and former Brookside actor Sam have been inseparable.
At the time, Linda was just five months off an acrimonious split from first husband builder Terry Bailey following bitter rows over his partying with footballer pal Paul Gacoigne.
On the face of it, he'd given Linda the country dream, building her a gorgeous detached house next to a lake in Hertfordshire.
But when her best friend and fellow Page 3 model Angie Layne died of breast cancer aged 32, the tragedy strengthened her resolve to leave him - especially when just two days later he went away partying with Gazza.
"Angie died of cancer at such a young age," she previously told The Mirror. "She was only 32. I had shared all my hopes, fears and dreams with her. It seemed so unjust. I felt a lot of my history died with her.
"It made me very angry. I just thought: 'If there is a god, why has she been taken away?' My marriage was falling apart, but her death made me look closely at the people around me. I just realised I had had enough. I knew he was not the man for me."
She certainly wasn't looking for love when she met Sam while starring in Snow White. Ten years younger than she was, Linda desperately tried to come up with reasons why they shouldn't be together.
"I'd just split with Terry, so was it rebound? Was he only interested because of my name?" she told the Sunday Express magazine. "But it just felt right; we had to be together. Without a doubt, Sam's the best thing that ever happened to me."
With Linda in her late thirties, daughter Lucy, now 24, was conceived after just two months and followed by brother Jack, 21.
She and Sam tied the knot in 1998 while she was pregnant and paid for all their friends and family to fly out to Spain for a celebratory holiday.
But the trip was marred by tragedy when Sam's mum collapsed and died from a heart attack.
"It was so traumatic flying back without her and seeing Sam hurting so much. We've always been so family orientated," Linda recalled.
Indeed, family has always been at the centre of everything for the couple, who despise being forced to spend time apart for acting jobs.
"We have got such a brilliant relationship. We never row. We laugh, enjoy the same things. He is my soulmate," she gushed.
"Sam is fantastic. My first marriage made me realise just what a special man I have got now.
"Sam loves his children so much and makes a wonderful dad. I really miss him when he is away. It is terrible being apart. I wish the time away until he next comes home."
Sadly, their relationship was put to the test once more in 2016 when she underwent surgery to remove a grapefruit-sized tumour from her womb.
Convinced it was cancerous, Linda and Sam endured an anxious two-week wait for the results while continuing to tread the boards each night in Aladdin - their 18th panto together.
”We just had to get through it, it was so tough. She was so brave," an emotional Sam told Loose Women, admitting, "the thought of going through life without her is unbearable.”
Thankfully, the growth turned out to be a 9cm fibroid which surgeons were able to remove while performing a hysterectomy.
