Shortly after the death of TV presenter Caroline Flack, her friend Ophelia Lovibond struggled to watch any footage of her. The actor would throw her phone across the room when an unexpected video of Flack came up on social media. She had lost family members in the past, but Flack was the first of her friends to die – and the impact was “seismic”.
“The grief and horror of that pain was very different to anything I had felt before,” she said. “It was so sudden and she was gone. There was no illness. There was no wrapping our heads around it. I felt I needed something to help with that more than the losses I’d experienced in the past – and poetry really helped.”
Poetry proved to be a cathartic crutch for W1A and Partygate star Lovibond, as she processed Flack’s death, and she’s hoping to help others do the same on Celebration Day. She is one of 11 actors and poets who are remembering loved ones they’ve lost by reading poems in their memory, joining the likes of Alison Steadman, Lemn Sissay and Joanna Scanlan as part of the movement.
Held every year on the final Monday of May, Celebration Day was first marked in 2022 and has been backed by the likes of Stephen Fry, Richard E Grant, and Prue Leith.
Lovibond, 40, is reading Christina Rossetti’s 1849 poem “Remember” – in which the poet tells her nearest and dearest that it’s “better by far you should forget and smile than that you should remember and be sad”.
“You get that white, hot pain when you lose someone and you think about them all day every day,” Lovibond said. “Sometimes one afternoon, you’ll think about them for the first time and feel really guilty that you didn’t think about them all morning. This poem is a simple message to say, ‘That’s OK because you can’t be completely stuck in this inertia of not living your life because you’re remembering mine’.”
But the actor does find herself remembering Flack all the time. “I see things that make me laugh and I think, ‘Gosh, she’d find that funny,’ or I’ll see things she’d be outraged by. The friendship is still going even though she’s not physically here.”
Lovibond met the Love Island presenter at a birthday party for writer Dawn O’Porter, where they sat next to one another. While she wasn’t familiar with her work, the pair immediately hit it off.
“It was an immediate rapport,” Lovibond recalled. “The next day she texted me and said, ‘Do you want to go for a drink?’ We became friends immediately. I’d never met anyone like her before and she brought out a side of me that no one else really did. It was a friendship I didn’t know I was missing.”
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Flack died in February 2020 by suicide shortly after being charged with assaulting her then-boyfriend Lewis Burton and stepping down from Love Island. Flack had pleaded not guilty to the charge and the Metropolitan Police later apologised to her mother, Christine, after failing to keep a record for why they charged her with assault.
“Caroline was singular,” Lovibond said. “When she died, there was a real sense of, ‘Oh God, all of that’s gone.’ We’d send stupid messages back and forth and I didn’t have that friendship with anyone else.
“There was a real mourning for not just her but for that friendship and that still stands. But as time’s gone on, I’ve witnessed the fact that I do still get enjoyment thinking about how she’d respond to something. My attitude towards it has shifted. The entire friendship hasn’t just gone, it manifests in a very different way.”
Flack’s arrest was highly publicised, with the presenter facing intense press scrutiny and social media trolls in the lead up to her death. The #bekind movement was founded after she died to remind people of how their actions online can have devastating consequences.
While six years have passed, Lovibond doesn’t think that society has learnt from the horrific circumstances around Flack’s death.
“The whole #bekind thing is important, but it’s still very much fodder,” she said. “There’s still the classic thing of build-them-up, tear-them-down. It’s addictive. I don’t think Caroline’s death and the contributing factors towards it have actually had any meaningful change in people’s attitudes.
“Maybe on an individual case by case basis they have, but I don’t think there’s been a general improvement in being more respectful and understanding. Maybe that’s me being pessimistic.”
While Lovibond is still experiencing grief over the loss of her friend, revisiting her memory is no longer painful. “I love talking about Caroline. I don’t find it upsetting,” she said.
“Talking about the person, for me, has helped. That whole stiff upper lip thing where you don’t talk about people – I just think that’s bonkers. Talk about them, remember them. As long as you remember them, they’re still with you.
“The idea of not having pictures of them around the house or them being a taboo subject, I would say do the exact opposite. Print pictures, frame them and talk about them.”
The ‘Poems to Remember’ series of videos is being released exclusively on The Independent for Celebration Day on Monday 25 May
If you are experiencing feelings of distress, or are struggling to cope, you can speak to the Samaritans, in confidence, on 116 123 (UK and ROI), email [email protected], or visit the Samaritans website to find details of your nearest branch.
If you are based in the USA, and you or someone you know needs mental health assistance right now, call the National Suicide Prevention Helpline on 1-800-273-TALK (8255). This is a free, confidential crisis hotline that is available to everyone 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
If you are in another country, you can go to www.befrienders.org to find a helpline near you.
