Scottish presenter Lynn Faulds Wood has died, aged 72.
Wood was best known for her work on BBC’s Watchdog, which she first hosted alongside husband John Stapleton between 1985 and 1993. Wood returned to the show in 2014.
In her first stint on the programme, she survived advanced bowel cancer, later setting up Lynn’s Bowel Cancer Campaign. She also survived skin cancer.
A statement released by her family on Friday read: “Having suffered a massive stroke last night and a subsequent bleed on the brain, presenter and journalist Lynn Faulds Wood passed away peacefully at 12 noon today with her husband John Stapleton and son Nick at her bedside.”
Before her work on Watchdog, Wood presented BBC’s Breakfast Time. She was later Consumer Champion on ITV’s GMTV, and also presented BBC’s Old Dogs, New Tricks with Dame Esther Rantzen and Rob Unsworth in 2006.
Rantzen said on Friday: “I have known Lynn for many years. We made a series together, which was huge fun but also very hard hitting because she was such an impressive and courageous consumer journalist.
“She fought for the rights of vulnerable people doggedly and determinedly, and she is a huge loss to journalism and to her friends and family. We are all devastated at this news.”
Wood helped to create the world’s first evidence-based guide to symptoms of bowel cancer, and the guide was officially adopted by the Department of Health in Britain in 2000.
