Actress Roxanne Pallett has enlisted celebrity support for a campaign to to tackle loneliness.

The ex-Emmerdale star, from Currock, Carlisle, appeared on Good Morning Britain to talk about her own experiences after she was challenged to spend 24 hours alone in a flat with no communication to the outside world.

And she won the backing of hosts Piers Morgan and Susanna Reid for the cause.

An emotional Roxanne, who is an ambassador for Age UK, became tearful as she logged her thoughts. "It just feels like time has stood still," she said.

"A minute feels like an hour and an hour feels like a day. I actually just want to go to bed."

She continued: "Just the feeling of being in a flat with no-one to have dinner with or talk to just really upset me.

"And the sad thing is, there's a lot of people out there living like that."

Footage was also shown that she had filmed herself of a squirrel in the garden outside, which Roxanne said had been the highlight of her day.

"This is probably the first day that I've not laughed," she said. "You can't share a joke on your own... It must be devastating to wake up and go to bed and not speak to anybody in between."

Roxanne, who played Jo Sugden in the ITV soap between 2005 and 2008, also spoke about her experiences and what it was like being alone in the flat.

"I was deprived of everything. Company, communication – they took my phone off me – so it was a long 24 hours," she said. "I knew I'd be bored but I didn't think I would feel so upset and that kind of kicked in half-way through."

Asked by Mr Morgan what aspect she found the most difficult, she said: "Just every minute felt like an hour and every hour felt like an eternity and that's people's lives.

"There's millions of people out there that are suffering loneliness and loneliness is an understated illness to me. It leads to depression and that's not living that's existing – and that's people's lives right now."

Mr Morgan asked her if loneliness was her overriding feeling. She replied saying it was, adding: "You're left alone with your thoughts.

"There's no social media, there's no texting anyone and so many people are enduring that and it was just 24 hours for me. That's their lifetime."

The former Trinity School pupil was also asked what was the worst thought she had. "It wasn't about me, I kept thinking about my mum," she explained.

"I kept thinking if anything were to happen to me, because it's just me and my mum... It suddenly dawned on me that my mum – what if she ended up just within her own company.

“And there's a lot of people out there that are independent but to go from having a busy social life - having a job - to retire. You lose that social side. The weeks are long and I just wanted to highlight that."

To date, more than 30m minutes have been pledged to a campaign organised by Good Morning Britain to spend time with the elderly.

Roxanne added: "We need to look around, we need to put down our phones and we need to talk to the person next to us and we need to see who's in our neighbourhood.

"Do we need to have a neighbour that perhaps we should knock on and say 'Do you need anything?'

“We need to look outside of ourselves.