KAY Mellor met patients at Bradford’s Marie Curie Hospice today, and spoke of her own experience of hospice care, when she launched the charity’s Great Daffodil Appeal.

The Bafta-winning writer, whose TV dramas include Love, Lies and Records, Girlfriends and The Syndicate, spent several hours at the hospice, visiting wards and day therapy rooms, and chatting to staff over a pot of tea and a slice of ‘daffodil cake’.

“When I lost my brother, Marie Curie nurses were fantastic,” said Kay. “My sister-in-law was very stressed and she really appreciated the nurses who came to their home. They brought so much support; not only with care and pain relief for my brother, but being there for her to talk to.”

Learning about services the hospice offers, including art classes and the Swan Song project, in which patients work with a songwriter recording songs about their lives, Kay said: “There’s so much to hospice care. It’s wonderful that people can leave a legacy of their own song, and have amazing therapy sessions.”

Asked if she would consider writing about hospice care, she said: “I touched on it in Love, Lies and Records, when a young woman who was terminally ill got married before she died.”

Kay also revealed she wrote her film Girls’ Night Out - about two friends, played by Julie Walters and Brenda Blethyn, one dying of cancer, who go on a dream trip to Vegas - following the death of a friend she visited in a hospice. “She was 42, one of my best friends. She said, ‘Tell me what you’ve been doing all week’ so I talked about the first night of my play in London, and meeting Sean Connery. I chatted away about life, because that’s what she wanted.”

Day therapy sister Lisa Butterfield and art tutor Steve Davis showed Kay around the day therapy section of the hospice, which offers patients such activities such as art classes, baking, hair and nail care and pat dog schemes. 

Marie Curie’s Great Daffodil Appeal runs until the end of March. Julia Cranston of Julia's Cakes and Bakes in Garforth made a cake covered in iced daffodils especially for the appeal.

Community fundraiser Amanda Warrent said: “There are various ways to get involved; 'Step into Spring' encourages people to walk 10,000 steps a day, using a free pedometer from our website - children at Bradford’s Arc Nursery did 10,000 steps over a week to a local park and now the nursery staff are doing the challenge. There’s a ‘Go Yellow’ wear-yellow-for-a-day challenge, supermarket collections and daffodil pins sold in Marie Curie shops and high street stores. Students at Hanson school have been raising nearly £400 a day selling pin badges.

"Every donation helps Marie Curie care for people with a terminal illness and support their families.”

* Visit mariecurie.org.uk/daffodil or call (01274) 386190.