Fiona Phillip’s heartbreaking decline to Alzheimer’s disease reminds me of my poor mum (Image: Dave Benett/Getty Images )
I remember her best from the week we spent together filming in Cornwall. It was for the BBC’s Bargain Hunt, and Fiona – then in her mid-50s – was a hoot. “Are you really going to buy that?” she asked me in a junk shop, as I haggled for some brass ornament or other. “Why not?” I replied, defensively.
“Because it’s TAT, Richard. You won’t even sell it at a loss – because no one is ever going to buy it! You’d best stick with me. Watch and learn.”
Just a handful of years later, at the absurdly early age of 61, Fiona was diagnosed with the same dementia that has dogged her family for generations. Tragically, today, the woman who made her name as a tenacious and popular breakfast television presenter has all but slipped away from us.
Her final thoughts in her memoir “Remember When: My Life With Alzheimer’s”, written with husband Martin Frizell before the dark curtains drew increasingly close around her, are not only deeply moving: they prompt recognition in those of us who have lost a loved one to dementia.
I identified with one account in particular. Fiona describes the photographs that surround her at home. Still aware enough to know that each one should provoke a special memory, she nevertheless simply can’t recall it.
“Everywhere I look there are memories,” she writes. “I know they’re there. Yet so many of them feel out of my reach now. It’s like I stretch out to touch them, but then just as I’m about to grasp it, the memory skips away from me.” My mother was just the same when Alzheimer’s came for her.
“Who’s he?” she would ask, holding a photograph of my father. “That’s Chris, mum. Your husband. My dad.”
“Oh… where is he now?”
“He died, mum, a long time ago. He had a heart attack.”
“Really? Well, well, well, fancy that! Was I there?”
“Yes, mum. You were holding him when he died.”
“Goodness!”
Fifteen minutes later, we’d have the identical conversation.
As I have written here before, the day mum died was particularly poignant.
She was drifting in and out of consciousness – she had terminal cancer too (Frizell writes with searing honesty that he wishes his wife had cancer instead of dementia: “At least then she might have had a chance of a cure”) – and she suddenly opened her eyes and asked me: “What did my mother look like?’’
I described my grandmother. “Why, mum?”
“Because when I get up there…” – she pointed at the ceiling – “mother would be so hurt if I didn’t recognise her. It will be all right now.”
One day there will be a cure for Alzheimer’s. Until then, all we can do is say our prayers for people like Fiona and Martin. God bless them both.
Bestselling memoir a hit, but is it true?
Telling porkies can be profitable. Extremely profitable, as the writers of smash-hit, bestselling memoir The Salt Path are accused of demonstrating to near perfection. I must be honest: I haven’t read the book: a vivid, glowing “unflinchingly honest” (ahem) account and “true story” (AHEM!) of how a married couple facing joint financial ruin and his terminal corticobasal degeneration diagnosis walk away their woes along the 630-mile South West Coast path.
Apparantly it’s jolly good; a real page-turner too. The problem is that those who actually know Sally and Tim Walker say The Salt Path is more akin to fiction than autobiography. The claim that the Walkers went bust when a business deal went wrong is disputed: it’s alleged she nicked £64,000 from her employer and got into schtuck that way. His illness? It’s a deadly type that carries off sufferers after a handful of years: 18 years on and our Tim is still going strong.
They deny everything and have produced letters to confirm a previous diagnosis of corticobasal syndrome and they’re consulting lawyers. Meanwhile their next book, On Winter Hill, is due out in October. Bet you a pound to a penny it sells out. People just love chancers.
Lila Moss a model child in every respect
Lila Moss and the first Type 1 diabetes Barbie doll. (Image: Jonathan Daniel Pryce)
How proud Kate Moss must be of daughter Lila – a model child in every respect.
Because professional model Lila, 22, has inspired the first Type 1 diabetes Barbie doll.
Lila was diagnosed with the condition as a child, and just like her, the new doll has a glucose monitor arm patch, an insulin pump on her leg, and a bag for emergency snacks. Lila says she hopes the doll will help children with diabetes “feel proud of who they are”, adding: “To see a Barbie that looks like me, even down to wearing the same patches, is surreal – and special!