Nikki Grahame’s final words revealed by her mum as she recalls loving phone call night before she died

The mother of late star Nikki Grahame has recalled the last conversation she had with her daughter, the night before at the age of 38 while .

The TV personality appeared on the seventh series of the reality show in 2006, and despite finishing fifth became one of its most recognisable .

She opened up publicly about how she developed anorexia while still a child and struggled with the condition throughout her life, spending time in hospital on a number of occasions.

Speaking ahead of the first anniversary of her death on April 9, her mother Sue Grahame remembered reassuring her that she would ‘get there’ with her recovery during their final conversation after she was discharged from local hospital following a two-week stay.

‘Nikki managed to convince them [clinic staff] – “I’ll be fine when I go home, I’m going back to the clinic on Monday” – but they’d already said we can’t have you because you can’t make stairs and so they let her home and she died that night,’ she told BBC Breakfast.

‘But she rang me at half-three in the morning and she said, “Hi mum”, she was quite normal, she normally did it when she was drunk. She said, “I managed to get to the loo”, she’d ordered herself a walking frame, so she managed to get into the loo.

‘I said, “Well done darling, that’s the way, every day just write down one thing that’s been positive today. You’ll get there, there is no hurry”.

‘She said, “Mum, I’m so tired”. So I said, “Go to sleep darling. I’ll call you in the morning”, and she died.’

Sue shared that her daughter’s BMI at the time of her death was 10, and that she had visited her in hospital ‘every day to shower her, to dress her, to sit with her while she ate, to take the load off the nurses’.

Doctors consider a healthy BMI for women to be 18.5–24.9.

Sue also revealed to and Sally Nugent that her daughter started to show signs of an eating disorder from the age of eight, when she refused to sit down in a restaurant on Mother’s Day, admitting that ‘little did I know it was going to be a 32-year journey.’

She also explained that the situation became more difficult when her daughter became an adult and she did not have a say in her medical care.

‘It was always a battle. But at least when she was a child, I had some input. As soon as she was an adult, they can’t even look at you. They don’t even make eye contact, it’s none of our business.’

Sue continues to be because she ‘was the healthiest and happiness that she had been for those years’, and said that Nikki – who was training to be a teaching assistant at the time of her death – never regretted being on the show.

‘I know that her going on Big Brother was her dream and I’m really glad she did, because I felt she deserved it. Because she’d lost her childhood, and I thought, “This is what you should have. This is yours”.’

Grahame is the subject of , which will coincide with the anniversary of her death.

BBC Breakfast airs from 6am on BBC One and BBC iPlayer. Nikki Grahame: Who Is She? airs on Thursday April 7 at 9pm on Channel 4.