ONE of the most versatile of broadcasters, Pattie Coldwell had worked on programmes ranging from Start the Week to the DIY shows On the House and Doing It Up. She even spied into celebrity homes as a panellist on Through the Keyhole, once memorably making a Coronation Street actress cry after a particularly savage appraisal of the decor.

But she was proudest of a quite different project. Earlier this month she invoked in print the memory of Terry Madeley, the Aids victim whose last days she charted 15 years ago in Remember Terry, the first programme on British television to discuss the condition openly. At the time she wrote of her admiration at his willingness “to allow strangers to see and hear what it is like to be dying slowly”, and over the past five years she has followed his example, charting in weekly diaries her own battles against breast and brain cancer.

Her articles were partly calls for action — supporting groups such as the breast cancer charity Breakthrough — and partly documentary, recording how cracks of pain or depression can break through the cover of bravery, but also how the fear of death can be mitigated by happiness.

Born in Preston, the daughter of a policeman, she had her first break after writing 92 letters to television companies when Granada offered her a place as a trainee on Granada Reports. Her first major appearance was as a presenter on the current affairs programme Nationwide, which soon led to a spate of credits. She went on to present Open Air, Watchdog and Crimewatch on BBC television, You and Yours on Radio 4 and Out of Order on Granada.

On Start the Week she chaired discussions that ranged through politics, history, science and the arts. More irreverent were her appearances later in life on Loose Women (ITV) and Channel 5’s Espresso, which she co-hosted with her first husband. Late-night listeners could also hear her chatting to other insomniacs on Radio 5’s After Hours.

Her passion for defending the common man stemmed partly from her experience in institutions where she felt she did not belong. Until it became her trademark, Coldwell’s accent (which she had tried to eradicate with elocution lessons) was a constant hindrance: after her first appearance on Start the Week, she said there were 2,000 complaints. Television, she said, was full of “a lot of wallies . . . It’s a closed, incestuous society full of middle-class Oxbridge males who represent only a small minority of the country”. She also denigrated ITV bosses for “their obsession with down market programmes”. These attacks were often almost accidental products of a ready and funny tongue, as when she stumped a fellow presenter on air by describing Sebastian Coe’s emotions as “going up and down like a bride’s nightie”.

Coldwell is survived by her second husband, Evan, and a daughter from her first marriage.

Pattie Coldwell, broadcaster, was born on May 14, 1952. She died on October 17, 2002, aged 50.