LEGENDARY Daily Mail columnist Lynda Lee-Potter died today, the newspaper said.

She had been suffering from a brain tumour.

Editor-in-chief Paul Dacre announced her death "with great sadness".

He said: "Lynda joined the Mail in 1967 and for the past 32 years her weekly column and countless interviews have made an incalculable contribution to the paper's success."

Lee-Potter, who was born in Leigh, had been ill for some time and wrote the last of her regular columns in May.

In July the Daily Mail informed readers that the journalist had experienced health problems but was due back after the summer break.

Her last contribution to the paper was an interview with TV presenter Gloria Hunniford, who spoke for the first time about the death of her daughter Caron Keating.

She has been described as "the Voice of Middle England" and "the First Lady of Fleet Street".

Accent

She was born Lynda Higginson in the 1930s, the daughter of a mining family in Leigh.

In her teens, she moved to London to study drama - telling friends that she lost her Lancashire accent on the train down.

She said in one of her columns: "When I went to drama school I got on the train at Warrington station with a thick Lancashire accent and got off at London without it.

"This meant that I had to speak extremely slowly for a very long time."

She married Jeremy Lee-Potter, a medical student and the son of an air marshal in 1957.

Soon after their marriage, the couple went to live in Aden in the Middle East where Mr Lee-Potter served in the RAF.

She began writing a column for the Aden Chronicle and after their return to London, was hired as a feature writer for the Daily Mail.