Inside Pauline Quirke and Linda Robson's rocky relationship after Birds of a Feather star's dementia diagnosis
Pauline Quirke and her Birds of a Feather co-star Linda Robson were at the centre of reports of a “feud” prior to her dementia diagnosis.
On Tuesday, Quirke’s husband Steve Sheen issued a health update on the star and said she would be "stepping away from all commercial and professional duties" to spend time with her family.
Dementia is a degenerative disease which results in the loss of cognitive functioning - thinking, remembering, and reasoning - to such an extent that it interferes with a person's daily life and activities.
Sheen revealed that she had first been diagnosed in 2021.
Despite Quirke and Robson being friends since childhood, rumours were rife that they’d had a bitter falling out sparked when Quirke was noticeably absent from the Birds of a Feather special back in 2020.
For decades, they entertained viewers of the sitcom as sisters Tracey and Sharon, who were left to fend for themselves after their husbands were arrested for armed robbery.
Aside from not featuring in the 2020 special, Quirke’s lines in the title song were removed and so were pictures of Tracey and Sharon together. It was claimed Linda and Pauline had become estranged.
Addressing the issue at the time, Robson told The Sun: "Take no notice of what you've heard about me and Pauline falling out. It's a load of old codswallop. Pauline just chose not to do Birds of a Feather. She wants to concentrate on her acting academy, that's that."
She continued: "We've known each other since we were 10. We're friends. Will Pauline return to the show? I don't know. I just know that the Christmas special went down really well. ITV were really, really pleased."
In 2022, she and their co-star Lesley Joseph attempted to further quash any notion of a row with Quirke by having lunch with her and being sure to post pictures capturing the occasion on social media.
Robson later said of the move: "We had our photo taken together and I got my daughter Roberta to upload it to my Instagram, captioning it: ‘A lovely lunch with my beautiful friends.’ It was our way of saying, ‘There you go, that’ll shut you up!’"
Then, in 2023, the Loose Women panelist admitted she had been “envious” of Quirke after she began picking up more serious acting roles.
Opening up during an episode of the ITV daytime show, she said: "So I've never really been jealous of Pauline Quirke but I used to be envious of all the roles she got like dramas and everything.
"I used to think, 'Lovely, I'm really pleased for you but I would love to do some drama role as well'. But now I am doing drama roles, so I don't have to be envious anymore do I! But no jealousy can be a terrible thing really. I was delighted she was so successful but I just wanted a little bit of it as well and I wished I had got that."
Robson has yet to comment on Quirke’s diagnosis.
