Slimming pills at 13 put Debbie on the way to her heroin death

Daily Mail Oct 12, 1997

SHE looks the epitome of precocious beauty, a vivacious teenager posing for the camera like the professional model she would become.

Yet behind this picture of hope and soon-to-be-fulfilled promise lies a tale of despair and sordid death.

For this photograph of Debbie Linden in her bikini was taken when she was just 13 — the age at which her lethal descent into drug and alcohol addiction began.

Still coming to terms with the 36-year-old former page 3 girl’s death from a suspected heroin overdose, her mother revealed yesterday that Debbie started taking drugs in the Seventies to control her weight.

‘First it was dieting pills, then she was anorexic, then we found out she was dabbling with alcohol, cannabis and all sorts of drugs,’ Rosemary Linden said last night.

‘God, she was so young. She was doing ballroom dancing, tap dancing and everything to prepare her for showbusiness but it was always the damned drugs — always, always.’

That 23-year downward spiral came to a tragic conclusion last Saturday when Debbie —who played the sexy secretary of young Mr Grace in the comedy Are You Being Served? — was found slumped in a hospital corridor in her home town of Kingston upon Thames, Surrey.

She died the following day in a drug-induced coma, her mother holding her hand at the end.

‘I could touch her, I could kiss her, but after all these years of trying to save her, there was nothing more anyone could do and we had to turn off her life-support system,’ said Mrs Linden.

Three men have been questioned in connection with Debbie’s death and bailed until next month.

Because there is to be an inquest, Mrs Linden is still able to go and see her daughter’s body.

‘She’s behind glass, but it’s still my Debbie there lying dead. I suppose, if I’m honest, I knew that one day this would happen. My husband Neil died 18 months ago and I’ve still been grieving over that. I’m in such a state now I don’t even have the money to bury Debbie. Everything’s gone.’

In the last week of her life, and with little or no money, Debbie had moved out of her bed and breakfast accommodation in Kingston where she lived on benefits, to be with her mother and brother, also called Neil.

‘Last Sunday, Debbie should have been starting a six-week detoxification session at Tolworth Hospital in South London,’ Mrs Lnden revealed. ‘But I can’t understand it — it went wrong and they said she could only be treated as a day patient.’

In those last few days of her life, Debbie twice slashed her wrists and her mother was fighting a desperate battle to try to get her booked into a hospital.

‘I even begged one doctor to section her under the Mental Health Act just so I could get her round-the-clock attention,’ said Mrs Linden.

‘We’d been to our GP, we’d been together to Kingston Hospital, where she was eventually found dying in a corridor, and on that final Saturday I thought she was going to be admitted to Tolworth.

‘She rang me on Saturday night from outside the hospital asking me to pick her up. But she went to some sort of drug place —Lord — I just don’t even know where it was.’

Before she went out that night Debbie hugged her mother a said: ‘I love you, Mummy. I’ always missed you, Mummy, and I want to thank you for everthing you’ve tried to do for me.’

Mrs Linden said: ‘It felt strange. I didn’t know then, but perhaps she felt everything had gone. She had told me earlier in the day that although she was at rock bottom — she had no work and no money — she wanted live. She was desperate to live.’ Actress Mollie Sugden, who played Mrs Slocombe in Are You Being Served?, told last night how cast members realised something was wrong with Debbie when she appeared in the show.

‘I remember going home one day and saying to my sons that I was so upset because I thought the pretty little girl was on drugs. Then I burst into tears.

‘She used to have a faraway look on her face some of the time and we all suspected something. I’m so upset by news of her death ---it is such a shame for someone so young and pretty. I really feel for her mother.’

John Inman, who played Mr Humphries, was in the United States last night promoting reruns of the cult programme when The Mail on Sunday told him of Debbie’s death.

‘What a terrible shame — I suspected that she was ill while she was in the show,’ said 62-year-old Inman.

‘She was often poorly and very peeky when we were filming. She was only in about six episodes but people remembered her as she was a nice girl.’

Debbie’s death puts the spotlight on the debate over the decriminalisation of cannabis. Richard Branson, Sir Paul McCartney, Anita Roddick, Martin Amis and Harold Pinter are among those who favour such a move.

Some, however, believe that experimentation with soft drugs such as cannabis can lead to the use of hard drugs like heroin.

For Debbie, it was cocaine counteracted by alcohol and valium that would lead to her demise.

In 1993, doctors told her she was ‘a month from death’ if she didn’t stop drinking and taking drugs. Her skin had gone grey and her liver had almost failed completely.

Mrs Linden added: ‘When you start off with babies, you never imagine that things could go so wrong.

‘But I’ll always remember her

laughter. She used to say I was her best friend as well as her mother. I don’t really blame the hospitals. After all, everyone has tried to help her ever since this began.’