Lynda Bellingham funeral: Julian Fellowes, Coleen Nolan and Stanley Tucci pay final tributes at Somerset service

Friends and family of Lynda Bellingham celebrated the life of the late actress today at her funeral in Somerset.

Fireworks were set off after the service, as Bellingham was laid to rest following her battle with cancer.

Among guests were Stanley Tucci, Christopher Biggins, Robert Lindsay, Christopher Timothy, Julian Fellowes and Julia Sawalha, as well as Loose Women co-presenters Jane McDonald, Coleen Nolan, Kate Thornton and Andrea McLean.

Bellingham’s husband, Michael Pattemore, and her two sons, Michael and Robbie Peluso, were also in attendance and helped carry the coffin, which was decorated with white roses, into the church. Christopher Biggins, Jane McDonald and Gyles Brandreth all addressed the congregation with their favourite memories of the actress.

Biggins said prior to the service would be “loud and bright and joyous. That’s the kind of girl she was.”

Over 100 fans stood outside in the rain as the hearse arrived at St Bartholomew's church in Crewkerne.

The interment will take place at Townsend Cemetery, in Mount Pleasant, Crewkerne, followed by a reception at Georgian hotel, Haselbury Mill.

A thanksgiving service will be held on 11 February at 12pm at St Stephen Walbrook in London.

Bellingham died from colon cancer on 19 October, aged 66. She had planned to end her chemotherapy in November so that she could have one final Christmas with her family.

She had detailed her funeral in advance, writing her wishes in her autobiography, There’s Something I’ve Been Dying To Tell You.

She wanted to be buried in Somerset, but have a “knees-up” in London as she “wouldn’t expect everyone to have to come all the way down here to pay their respects”.

“We have reached a compromise, I think, and there will be a service in Somerset and a knees-up in London,” she wrote. “So if you are passing, do drop in for a quick boogie.”