TV presenter and Naked Attraction star, Anna Richardson, 54, is fronting Channel 4’s Anna Richardson: Love, Loss And Dementia – a personal and emotional look at the disease that affects one in three people… including her dad.
You must be proud of your documentary.
Very – it’s a real passion project. For 18 months I’d been pitching to Channel 4 to do a film about dementia because my dad has it. So when this project came up with a different production company and Alzheimer’s Society – they wanted to do a big campaign around it – I jumped at the chance. It has been a lot of hard work, very emotional, but I’m very proud of it.
Your dad, Jim, 83, is lucky to have you.
It’s a mixed blessing. I don’t see him enough because I’m in London and he’s up north, so it shines a light on the difficulties of caring, of pressures on family. He’d love to see me and my brothers all the time so there’s a lot of guilt associated with that.
What was the first clue that something was amiss?
I think we’d been missing clues for years. My dad had his first mini stroke when he was 41 and I was ten. He was rushed to hospital and we didn’t think a thing of it because he was a young man.
For 15 or so years he was starting to get our names wrong but we thought it was just dad being a bit of an idiot.
About seven years ago I got a call to say he’d been rushed to hospital after a stroke. The consultant said, ‘Your dad has been having these mini strokes for some time and he has vascular dementia. He will continue to have little strokes and his dementia will get worse and worse and eventually he’ll just drop off a cliff.’ That was the first time we had a label for it.
Do you notice the mini strokes?
Yes, if I’m with him. Vascular dementia is to do with blood flow, and if he starts not to make sense in a conversation, his words slur and he gets a very spaced-out look. They can be fairly frequent and you have to try to gauge how severe they are.
How has the relationship with your dad changed?
It’s closer because he relies so much on us. When I see him, he treasures that we’ll go for a bite to eat. We’ve become closer making this film.
Making the film, what did you learn about dementia that you didn’t know?
We tend to associate it with being old, so the thing that really shocked me was Jordan’s story – he’s 29 and carries a gene that will almost certainly lead to dementia.
The other thing I didn’t know was a lot of dementias are part of an underlying biological disease and this starts 20 to 30 years before symptoms start – ie at my age. That made me panic a little.
The Mary and Richard story on the programme is heartbreaking.
That was the most impactful story for me. Richard was diagnosed really early, at 55, and rapidly declined. They sold their house and used their life savings to pay for his care and Mary had to give up her career – and that’s wrong. I could rant about this all day.
What can we do to prevent dementia?
There are more than 100 types of dementia – it’s an umbrella term for end-stage brain disease. Some are genetic, some an underlying biological disease – so when you look at that, how do we prevent it? Eat well – a wholefood, clean diet – don’t drink alcohol, exercise, exercise, exercise, stay connected, make sure you’re socialised, have purpose and check your hearing: there’s a strange link between hearing and dementia.
How can we help?
Drugs are coming down the line, especially for Alzheimer’s – the prevalent dementia. So we need people to take part in trials and lobby their MP to make dementia care a priority.
There are lots of people wandering around with dementia who don’t know they have it. Can you imagine if we were told by healthcare authorities, ‘You might have cancer but we’re not going to bother testing for it. Good luck!’ There’d be a national outcry. So why we’re allowing this for dementia, which is Britain’s biggest killer, is beyond me.
Is this what Alzheimer’s Society does?
Lobbying, certainly. I want to do for dementia what Davina McCall did for the menopause.
Let’s finish on a silly question. What does your dad – a retired vicar – think about you doing Naked Attraction?
He loves it – he thinks it’s hilarious! A lot of older people love it. We like to think of it as family viewing – Strictly Come Dancing for all the generations.
Dementia’s devastating impact is enormous – it’s the UK’s biggest killer but often the realities of it are hidden behind closed doors. Share your dementia story at alzheimers.org.uk/stories to help Alzheimer’s Society create an unignorable case for urgent action. For information and support, visit alzheimers.org.uk
Anna Richardson: Love, Loss & Dementia is available to watch on All 4 now.
