SALLY Lindsay can’t seem to keep away from Warrington.

The star of Ordinary Lies and former Coronation Street actor has been in the town on several occasions recently with the last being to celebrate the year anniversary of Warrington Hospital’s Forget Me Not ward.

The revamped dementia ward reopened last year after being awarded a £1million grant to make it more suitable for the complex needs of the patients treated there.

Sally, who has been an ambassador for the Alzheimer’s Society for almost 15 years spent the afternoon meeting patients and staff on the ward as well as dementia guardians, specially trained volunteers.

She said: “My gran and her four sisters all died of Alzheimer’s so it is something that was very prevalent in our family and this was sort of 20 years ago and it might as well have been yesterday.

“It was so hideous what happened. There was nothing then back in the 90s, nothing like this. There was no treatment and it was nobody’s fault because nobody knew anything about it.

Warrington Guardian:

Sally dances with patient Edna Houghton while 50s style singer Bexi Owens performs

“To have something this amazing for people who are so special and have led such full lives and to treat them with this amazing dignity is beyond belief. I am blown away by this place, it is amazing.”

Warrington and Halton NHS Foundation Trust’s chief executive Mel Pickup and ward manager Deborah Hammond showed Sally some of the regular activities held on the ward for patients which including painting, planting and singing.

Sally is also an outspoken champion for the NHS and the services it provides and recently spoke at a Labour Party rally in the town.

“Last time I was in Warrington it was for Ordinary Lies and then I was here again a short time ago with the Labour Party,” she said.

“Warrington seems to be on my list this year. But everyone seems terribly nice so that’s alright.

“I am backing Andy Burnham because he is very passionate about Alzheimer’s as well because he has personal experience of it as well.

“It is not just that, the NHS is such a special thing to have. Things like this facility should happen in every single hospital in the country because dementia nurses are so unbelievably different, they are trained in a different way because they understand the care of someone that doesn’t understand themselves.

“We need to keep the NHS like a jewel and it has saved a lot of my family. I always think of it like a parent struggling to look after their kids at the moment and we need to get it back to where it should be.

“Hopefully if the Tories do what they say they are going to do then that would be great but I won’t hold my breath.”

When asked if there would be a second series of the recent BBC series Ordinary Lies, which was filmed in Warrington, she said she was hopeful there would be.

“We got 6.5million on every episode even thought they put us against the football which we weren’t happy about but anyway.

“It is looking good but we don’t really know. We all want to do it so if the readers could campaign and write letters to the BBC that would be great. We would love to come back to Warrington, we loved it.”

Sally's visit came during this year's Dementia Awareness Week for which the hospital has had stands in at its entrance for people to drop by and found out more about what the trust is doing to improve care for people with dementia.