Theo Burrell, star of 'Antiques Roadshow' and a cancer research advocate, dies at 39

Theo Burrell, an “Antiques Roadshow” prima and crab probe advocate, has died. She was 39.

A household subordinate announced Burrell’s decease connected Instagram connected Saturday, writing, “It is with large sadness that I stock the quality that Theo passed distant peacefully surrounded by her household connected Wednesday afternoon. Neither she nor her aesculapian squad foresaw this happening rather truthful quickly.

“She was an unthinkable idiosyncratic who fought hard for her family, friends and raising consciousness of this cruel disease,” the station continued. “She saw beingness events similar her son’s archetypal time astatine schoolhouse and her wedding that a small implicit 4 years agone we thought she’d ne'er see.”

Burrell, calved Theodora Helen Burrell connected Sept. 1, 1986, was a ceramics and decorative arts specializer connected the BBC’s “Antiques Roadshow,” a world bid that features antiques experts appraising household heirlooms, store merchantability gems and more. Off screen, she worked arsenic a specializer and auctioneer astatine Lyon & Turnbull, the oldest auction location successful Scotland.

“One of the things I emotion astir antiques is that they person survived truthful galore years, witnessing beingness changing events specified arsenic coronations & satellite wars,” Burrell wrote successful the caption of an 1840s-era achromatic marble bust.

In June 2022, Burrell was diagnosed with an incurable, assertive Grade 4 encephalon tumor, and was told she had a twelvemonth to a twelvemonth and a fractional to live. She subsequently underwent encephalon surgery, radiotherapy and chemotherapy successful an effort to support the crab astatine bay. In June 2023, she organized a star-studded auction to rise wealth for the British crab probe nonprofit the Brain Tumour Charity and raised the equivalent of astir $93,500. She besides became a patron of the foundation Brain Tumour Research.

“We are heartbroken that we person mislaid the phenomenal, determined and genuinely inspiring Theo to this devastating disease,” Dan Knowles, main enforcement of Brain Tumour Research, said connected Instagram. “She perpetually inspired america with however large her bosom was and we volition proceed connected our mission, driven by everything she taught us. Our thoughts are with her family, her friends and with each those who had the privilege of knowing her.”

During a January 2024 BBC “Morning Live” appearance, Burrell said that six months earlier she was diagnosed, she started to get antithetic symptoms including headaches, nausea, feelings of unit successful her caput and issues with her vision. After aggregate trips to assorted physicians and a CT scan, doctors recovered an astir 2-inch-diameter encephalon tumor successful the close broadside of her brain.

She spoke candidly astir her conflict successful the media and crossed societal platforms, telling BBC, “I truly felt that with a tiny nationalist illustration which I had from the ‘Roadshow’ that if I could bash thing bully with that, past I should. And I person watched different people, specified arsenic Tom Parker, who sadly mislaid his beingness to a glioblastoma, truly enactment truthful incredibly hard erstwhile helium was truthful sick to effort and marque a quality for radical similar me.”

Burrell’s household said successful the connection announcing the antiques enthusiast’s decease that the crab assemblage provided “so overmuch comfortableness and spot to her successful her darkest moments.”

“But astir of each it provided anticipation and I deliberation what she would privation astir of each is for different radical to find anticipation successful her story. Hope that the statistic aren’t gospel and that 1 time they’ll beryllium precise different.”