Meg Matthews has called for soaps to raise awareness of the menopause.
The 54-year-old star – who launched MegsMenopause in 2018 – wants soap operas to tell storylines of their characters going through the natural female ageing process, in which menstrual periods stop permanently, by talking about the symptoms and effects it has on their daily lives.
Speaking to the Daily Telegraph newspaper, she asked: "Why is all this stuff such a taboo? Why isn’t the menopause an issue on ‘Hollyoaks’? Why didn’t Bet Lynch ever have a hot flush?"
Before she was told she was going through the menopause, Meg – who has 20-year-old daughter Anais with ex-husband Noel Gallagher, 53 – thought she was "going mad" after she suddenly started suffering from "awful" anxiety.
She previously shared: "Basically, it all came about when I woke up and I had this feeling of being quite low and then all this anxiety hit me. It was awful. I mean, I am a worrier, I get a bill and I’ll look at it and my stomach will go into a knotted panic. I couldn’t go out, I couldn’t go out to buy a pint of milk because I had social anxiety so I lied – I even told people I had glandular fever.
"They thought I was pregnant … I kept feeling nauseous, my boobs hurt and I couldn’t walk to the bathroom because everything ached. I had this dry mouth thing, all these things. I thought I was going mad."
And now, the star is determined to fight for women by making the world more menopause-friendly, starting with work spaces.
She added: "If there are signs up in toilets about LGBT, why can’t there be signs with information about the menopause?"