Fiona Phillips' husband shares heartbreak amid Alzheimer's diagnosis: 'She thought I kidnapped her'

Yahoo

2 days ago

Fiona Phillips' husband Martin Frizzel has told how the former GMTV presenter had thought he had kidnapped her during a walk around their street, as he shared the heartbreak of her progressing dementia.
Broadcaster Phillips was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease in 2022 after losing both of her parents to the same condition, and Frizell returned to This Morning, which he had edited until earlier this year, to give an update on how she is now.
Frizell, who spent 10 years at the helm of the ITV daytime show, told presenters Alison Hammond and Dermot O'Leary that Phillips did not seem to remember she was married to him. He also spoke about her book chronicling her dementia, Remember When, which he contributed to.
Frizell returned to This Morning on Friday, 11 July to raise awareness of Alzheimer's disease and shared heartbreaking details about his wife Phillips' decline after a 2022 diagnosis.
He said: "I've got this picture that I took of her at the end of our road a few weeks ago. She's looking great, she's smiling, she's got her coat on - and what you don't know is, she thought I'd kidnapped her. This was us going out.
"You get all sorts of delusions...she keeps saying, 'I want to go home'."
Asked whether she still recognised him, he admitted: "She does recognise me most of the time, she doesn't quite know I'm her husband, but she knows who I am."
Frizell added that she would often ask to go home to her parents, who both died after their dementia diagnoses, and said: "We walk round the block a couple of times, then we come back in and she says, 'oh, I'm home now'."
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Speaking about the book Remember When that they had written together, he explained: "It was to give her a purpose first and foremost, to give her something to do.
"For most of her life she's done live television, she's a fearless woman, and then all of a sudden it stops. She's got bad depression because she wants to work. She'd love to be here, but she's not well enough to come and talk to you."
Frizell and the couple's two children had begun to notice changes in Phillips around five years ago, including mood swings. "I thought, is it just a long marriage, is that just the way things go?" he said. "I hoped against hope it was menopause."
Opening up on the effect her diagnosis had on their relationship and family life, he confessed: "I'm only human, I get frustrated. I do end up arguing with her sometimes, I get so worked up after the fifth or sixth or the 10th time that I say something."
While Phillips has been enjoying listening to music and can remember many song lyrics, Frizell recalled Line of Duty star Vicky McClure coming into This Morning one day to speak about her dementia choir and the strong reaction it had provoked when he suggested something similar to his wife.
He said: "I remember the day we had (McClure) on the sofa...I went home and said to Fiona, 'Have you ever thought of joining a choir, Fiona?' I can't tell you what the expletive was. Put that alongside 'have you thought of doing a jigsaw? Have you thought of doing watercolours?'."
Speaking about how Phillips is now, Frizell said: "Although she's got Alzheimer's, she's still whipsmart and intelligent." He added that she was "still totally mobile" and said: "The old Fiona is still very much there."
He told host Hammond: "She watches you and she remembers you."
Frizell also spoke about his anger at the lack of funding for Alzheimer's research, which he addresses in the book. He told This Morning: "I get so angry. Society has decided we're not going to take it as seriously as we should...You become invisible with Alzheimer's. No one wants to know because it's just so horrible."
He candidly admitted: "I say in the book, I wish she'd got cancer. And I mean that, in the sense that then at least there'd be some hope."
Frizell added: "It's not a sexy disease in terms of the pictures aren't great. If you start to get Alzheimer's badly, it's not a good look. On your deathbed, you look bloody awful. It's not going to get front pages. No royals seem to have had it, but they've had cancer...Once I stop speaking about it, I reckon it will just quietly go away into the shadows again."
This Morning airs on ITV1 at 10am on weekdays.