Emmerdale icon makes devastating death confession as she shares funeral plan

Emmerdale icon Samantha Giles made a devastating confession about her own death, admitting that it's something she used to "worry" about. The actress, who played Bernice Blackstock for 25 years on the ITV soap before leaving in 2023, appeared on Marie Curie's On the Couch podcast to discuss the bereavement of her uncle and her own funeral plans.

Samantha was asked during her 2024 appearance: "Do you ever think about your own death?" and admitted: "Yes, I do. When I was younger I used to be very afraid of death, actually. I don't know why, because when you're younger you're sort of infallible, aren't you? It should be the first thing from your thoughts, but I suppose I've always been quite a deep thinker so I did worry about it, because it feels like it can't possibly happen.

"How can you one minute be here and the next minute it's just your shell? How can that be? Where are you, where have you gone? Questions we all ask... Then as I've got older, I think life is very, very hard and if you're lucky enough to die when you're older, if you've lived a long life and can get to old age and die of something related to old age... I think you've got to feel very blessed, haven't you, because people get cut down very young."

Musing on feeling "ready" for death, she said: "Then I got to thinking, perhaps some people are ready for it. Particularly if you've had a long illness, which must be horrendous, there must come a point where you feel I'm ready to move away from this life now because I'm in so much pain or because I can't do anything and I have no quality of life... it must feel like a release, a relief.

"I just hope that I'm ready for it. That's all you can... I hope that I have done everything that I want to do in life and I'm ready for the next chapter, because I don't think it's over, and we have this soul or this spirit, an energy, and you can't destroy that energy. It goes somewhere."

Samantha was then asked about her own plans for dying, and she explained to the host: "We haven't done our wills, my husband and I, and we should. That is something I've been thinking very seriously about the last couple of months.

"I have thought about one song that I'd like at my funeral. I suppose I should find somewhere to write these things down. I know it's uncomfortable for other people, but if you write it down and put it in an envelope somewhere, you don't have to tell people."