Maureen Lipman says her 'heart is cracking' over partner Guido Castro's death

Maureen Lipman has shared her heartbreak over the death of her partner of 13 years, Guido Castro.

The Coronation Street actor lost her partner, 84, on Thursday, saying he had not died of COVID-19 but that the virus had weakened him.

Speaking to The Mail, she said: “He got COVID – it wasn't COVID that killed him but it weakened him terribly.”

Lipman, 74, said that Castro had been vaccinated just days earlier, but that it was impossible to know how or when he had contracted the virus or if he had it at the time of his vaccine.

He had been living in a respite home as he had a form of Parkinson’s disease, where he tested positive for coronavirus.

Opening up on being with him at the time he died, she said: “I said to Guido, 'It's time to go. You've got to let go'. And I think for once in his life he actually did what I told him.”

The Pianist star Lipman had previously given an interview to The Mail’s Weekend magazine and explained she wanted to update it with her sad news as she didn’t want people to think “I was being frivolous and joking at a time when my heart is cracking”.

She was married to Jack Rosenthal from 1974 until his death in 2004 and had recently talked about finding it impossible to grieve her husband’s death because it went against her nature to make people laugh.

Lipman had been in a relationship with Castro since 2008.

Elsewhere in her Mail interview, she had explained the stringent procedures for filming safely on Coronation Street and said that she was one of the first to start wearing a mask early last year.

She also expressed concerns about the new strains of COVID and whether the vaccine would work against them, saying she didn’t feel “terribly safe”.

Watch: UK couple wed on COVID ward