Coleen Nolan has hit back after being brutally trolled for smiling at her late sister Linda’s funeral during Monday’s instalment of Loose Women.
Linda passed away on January 15 2025 following a 20-year battle with breast cancer and suffering from double pneumonia.
During the most recent episode of the ITV show, Coleen, Ruth Langsford, 64, Judi Love, 44, and Mariella Frostup, 62, discussed when they think is the right time when you feel that you can start laughing again after losing someone.
And the singer revealed that she received some disgusting messages after looking upbeat at Linda’s funeral.
Speaking on Loose Women, Coleen said: ‘We’ve got to stop judging people on how we deal with grief.
‘And I’ve got to stop caring what other people think.
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Coleen Nolan has hit back after being brutally trolled for smiling at her late sister Linda’s funeral during Monday’s instalment of Loose Women
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During the most recent episode of the ITV show, Coleen, Ruth Langsford, Judi Love and Mariella Frostup discussed when they think is the right time when you feel that you can start laughing again after losing someone
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Coleen and her late sister Linda pictured at the best Heroes Awards back in 2023
‘I got out of the funeral car smiling because there were about 2,000 people looking and smiling.
‘And I’m getting slated on social media… “What’s she smiling about?”
‘I’m like… I don’t know what you want me to do!
‘It bothered me at first and I thought, I’ve got to stop caring what people… we all deal with it differently.’
Ruth admitted that would have made her smile to see so many people at her sister’s funeral.
Coleen explained: ‘It made us cry in the car.
‘When we turned the corner there was all these people there and it made us cry because Linda would have loved it!
‘I was so glad they turned out for her. So it was a gratitude thing.’
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Coleen revealed that she got some disgusting messages after looking upbeat at Linda’s funeral
On Saturday 1 February Linda’s family and friends gathered at St. Paul’s Church in Blackpool to celebrate her life.
Earlier on in the discussion, Ruth asked if Coleen feels guilty for finding laughter again.
‘Do you think she’d want you to be laughing?,’ Ruth questioned.
Coleen explained: ‘I think the thing with grief in itself is that you feel all those emotions.
‘Some days when I laugh and it hits me and I think, I shouldn’t be laughing.
‘Then there’s other days I’m crying and think she wouldn’t want me to cry.
‘It’s every emotion and it can happen 10 different times a day.
‘The thing with me and my family actually, and Linda and Bernie included, we always made sure that humour was involved, because it was the only way we could move on from it.
‘Sometimes that is the only way I can move on because if I carried on crying how much I have been crying, if I didn’t then all of a sudden find something funny and not get out of bed, I wouldn’t get out of bed and I would never stop crying.
‘It was getting to a point where I was getting so so low inwardly, I don’t want to go back I don’t want to do anything. I just didn’t see joy.
‘I lost feeling. It was really numbing.’
Earlier this month Coleen returned to Loose Women and broke down in tears as she detailed Linda’s final moments on the programme.
Speaking about her battle with cancer, Coleen said: ‘Linda battled it for 20 years and she never gave up. She hated it, hated losing her hair, and she did that four times.’
‘And right up until the end, the day she was passing away, the day before she was up eating soup and eating a sandwich and we were all having a laugh and then she just took a turn.’
‘But when she couldn’t talk to us anymore but was still breathing, they said at two o’clock in the afternoon, they said ‘she’ll go soon’.
‘And she didn’t go till half past 10 the following day, she still wouldn’t go, I was like “she’s not ready she wants an encore”. But yeah she fought it till the end.’
Linda rose to fame alongside sister Coleen Linda as part of The Nolan Sisters.
