Actress Sue Johnston says she cannot bring herself to delete dead friends’ numbers from her phone as it is too final

Deleting the telephone contacts of a recently departed loved one can be upsetting, rekindling the same feelings of loss and despair experienced when we first learnt of their death.

Indeed it’s something the actress Sue Johnston has admitted she cannot bring herself to do when it comes to the names of those she has lost.

The star of Brookside, Age Before Beauty and the Royle Family still has on her list of mobile phone contacts the telephone number of her friend and fellow actor Caroline Aherne, who died of lung cancer two years ago at the age of 52..

"I can't bring myself to take her number out of my phone. It's that word ‘delete’. It's so final,” said Johnston.

"I've got a few friends who have passed but are still in my phone and they sometimes come up as I'm scrolling through my contacts list.

"If you've got them there in your phone, they're still part of you and still alive in a way."

In a world where digital communication is ubiquitous and where names and contacts details are an instant reminder of friends and relatives, the dilemma of whether to delete someone’s name has become increasingly fraught.

In a recent moving essay one of Australia’s leading tourism executives, Dean Gould, admitted: “It is one of the most disturbing things I've had to do. That digital ‘contact’ is a real life friend who is now dead. If ever we needed convincing that the world - and all our interactions in it - had turned digital, then deleting a suddenly dead friend's phone number is the final piece of evidence.”

Johnston, who played the mother of Aherne’s character Denise in the Royle Family, said in an interview with The Lady magazine: “I dreamt about Caroline last night, which I've not done for a long time. I think it was because my subconscious knew I was going to do this interview.”

This year sees the 20th anniversary of the first airing of the groundbreaking Royle Family, written by Aherne with Craig Cash and Henry Normal.

In the comedy drama Aherne - who grew up in Manchester and made her name with her Mrs Merton character - dispensed with canned laughter and a traditional set in favour of a fly-on-the wall that proved to be lastingly influential.

“Caroline, Craig and Henry had to fight very hard from the outset because they didn’t want the usual camera set-up or canned laughter. It really moved comedy forward and people started realising that you didn’t have to have canned laughter or a studio audience to make things work,” said Johnston. “It’s Caroline’s legacy and I’m delighted it’s still held in such high regard.”

Johnston, who was born in Warrington and grew up immersed in the world of The Beatles and Merseybeat - at one stage she dated the drummer of the Swinging Blue Jeans and went on tour with him - says the television roles offered to older women have improved , but that “there’s still an awful lot of cliched stuff”.

She added: “You only have to look around and see how women actually are in their 70s and 80s. We have lives and dress fashionably and whimsically and eccentrically. You should absolutely grow old disgracefully.”