EastEnder Cheryl Fergison had to use food bank as she fought cancer
Former EastEnders actress Cheryl Fergison has revealed she struggled to pay the bills and needed to visit a food bank after being treated for womb cancer. Fergison, known for playing Heather Trott on the BBC One soap from 2007 until 2012 as well as Celebrity Big Brother and The IT Crowd, was diagnosed in 2015, and shared her condition in April 2024.
The soap star, who is based in Cleveleys, Lancashire, explained to OK! Magazine earlier this year that she underwent a hysterectomy and experienced early onset menopause due to the treatment before she got the all-clear. She detailed to the Sunday Mirror how she had to stop acting due to undergoing treatment, which caused her money issues, as well as mental health problems.
Fergison, 60, previously said she had been supported financially by former EastEnders colleague Dame Barbara Windsor, who died in 2020 aged 83, and in February this year she had nothing left. “I didn’t have any money to do a weekly shop, I was trying to pay too many debts,” she said.
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“It was a really difficult time. Lots of people can relate to it. You’re trying to find a penny. You’re literally looking down your settee to see if you can find a quid.”
When she attended Citizens Advice and they suggested a food bank, she said she “cried and cried” and felt “it was shameful”. “How could I have been earning that much money and now I am here?,” she asked.
However, since being supported by the food bank, who Fergison called “angels”, she said she has not needed their help again. Instead, Fergison said she has been able to return to work in pantos and singing in restaurants.
“I hope other people can relate to it. I really want to stress that food banks are a service,” she said. “They’re there for you to use so please do not feel embarrassed or that it’s a weakness. Whatever the reason, you deserve help. We have a right to be able to live like a human being and do it in a dignified way.”
Earlier this year, Rudolph Walker – known as Patrick Trueman on EastEnders – revealed that he had been without a stable home for a period, while working on the soap, and had to live in a hotel with a shared toilet after money issues. He told the Daily Mirror he “didn’t have any financial means” while he was in his 70s and “nowhere to live”.
Walker, 85, said: “Some days on my way to the studio, I would pull up at the side of the road, have a cry. “I’d pull myself together, arrive at the studio and the environment would act as a tonic, and I was ready to go. I suppose it was a sort of double life.”
Fergison has also been in Little Britain sketches and Your Face Sounds Familiar, and appeared in the Netflix show Hard Cell with Catherine Tate in 2022.
