CHARITY campaigner and actress Emma Samms has been awarded the MBE for services to seriously and terminally ill children in the Queen's Birthday Honours list.

Emma, from Stroud, co-founded the Starlight Children's Foundation with her cousin Peter Samuelson in 1986.

The charity now supports children across the world with every possible illness including leukaemia and other cancers, heart disease, cystic fibrosis and other genetic conditions.

Emma's younger brother, Jamie, passed away when he was just eight-years-old after he became unwell with aplastic anaemia, which was incurable at the time.

Some years later, Emma visited a young boy in hospital called Sean, who was seriously ill with a brain tumour.

He and Emma became great friends and one day as they were chatting Sean told Emma that his dream was to visit Disneyland.

Emma helped fundraise so that Sean's dream could come true, leading to the idea to set up Starlight which could help other ill children.

"I am absolutely thrilled, it was a complete surprise," said Emma, who starred in TV shows Dynasty and General Hospital in the 1980s.

"My work with the charity, and other charities which I am involved with, has been an absolute privilege and a blessing.

"We set up the charity for my brother's sake and since then it has been moving to see the positive repercussions of his short life on so many others."

Starlight delivers services into the heart of communities nationwide and in Australia, the USA and Canada.

In its first year the charity helped four children.

It now grants wishes to some 700 children a year and provides entertainment to over half a million children in hospitals and hospices in the UK.

Emma has been active at the centre of Starlight’s work since its inception.