I Couldn't Even Be With Eddie In His Final Moments

The widow of comedy legend coronavirus victim Eddie Large today tells of her agony at being banned from the star’s bedside as he died.

- Patrick Hill

Tearful Patsy McGinnis begged nurses to let her see her husband but had to stay away because of the hospital’s strict lockdown restrictions.

“I was saying ‘please… please’, but they said they couldn’t let anyone in,” said Patsy, 76. “It broke my heart I couldn’t be with him those last days.”

She doesn’t even know if she’ll be allowed to see 78-year-old Eddie’s body to say a final goodbye – and reveals her anguish that his double act sidekick Syd Little will miss his lifelong pal’s funeral because of Government rules that only close family members can attend.

“Syd is heartbroken,” she said. “He and Eddie were teenage friends and worked together from 1963. He’s essentially family and deserves to be there.”

Patsy’s final conversation with her husband of 37 years was over the phone hours before his death early on Thursday morning – four days after he tested positive for COVID-19 which he’s believed to have picked up in hospital.

“The last words I said to him were ‘darling I love you, we all miss you so much and really want you to be able to come home’,” she said.

“He wasn’t feeling good and said ‘I’m going to have to go darling’. Then he said ‘I love you’, put the phone down and that was it. At 4 am the hospital rang to tell us he had passed away.

HEART

“We haven’t been able to see Eddie’s body since and I’m not sure if we’ll be allowed to.”

Patsy, a former singer and dancer, met Eddie when they both appeared in Aladdin in Liverpool together in 1977. The ex-electrician, born Edward McGinnis, was in his heyday with pal Syd, real name Cyril Mead.