Angela's heartbreak at mother's death
The Plymouth-born former newsreader's mother Edna suffered from dementia for five years.
After her diagnosis, Miss Rippon effectively became her carer until her mother was so weak, she had to be moved into a care home in Devon.
A fortnight ago, Edna, increasingly fragile, developed a throat infection that meant she could no longer swallow.
She slipped into unconsciousness and died five days later, at the age of 88, with her daughter by her side.
Miss Rippon, 65, said: "I brushed her hair and rubbed cream into her hands. My mother always looked immaculate.
"She liked her nails done and she had stunning thick hair. I didn't want her to have an undignified end – she would have hated that.
"I'm told the hearing is the last thing that goes so I kept talking to her, about walking in the moors and holidays we'd been on. I've watched my mother dying for a while. I've known that she was fading and, in a way, it's good for her that she didn't have a long drawn-out illness.
"But watching her die in front of me was heartbreaking."
Miss Rippon became the BBC's first regular woman newsreader in 1976 and was awarded an OBE for her services to broadcasting in 2001.
She was speaking to the Mail on Sunday about her latest television project, a series of BBC1 consumer affairs programmes entitled Rip Off Britain which she is presenting with Jennie Bond and Gloria Hunniford.
"Work is helping to distract me," she said. "It in no way diminishes the way I shall grieve for my mother.
"But it's my way of coping, and actually, knowing my mother, it's what she would have wanted me to do."
She had already planned her mother's funeral, which was held on Friday in Horrabridge, the West Devon village where her mother lived. Miss Rippon is an only child whose father – Edna's husband of 61 years – died five years ago.
His sudden death from a heart attack sparked the onset of his wife's dementia, a serious brain disorder that destroys the memory and mental capacities of sufferers.
Three years ago, Edna could no longer take part in local activities and was subsequently moved into the care home.
"She was a very feisty woman until about two months ago, when she became frail," said Miss Rippon.
"In moments of lucidity, she would ask me what was happening to her.
"I'd say, 'Mummy, you've got dementia'. She'd ask what that meant. Then she'd float off."
Miss Rippon inherited her staunch work ethic from her mother, who had been the manager of a Wedgwood China shop and combined working and bringing up Angela while her husband – a Royal Marine – was fighting in the Second World War.
"She was a businesswoman which was quite trailblazing in the Fifties," said Miss Rippon.
