Earlier this year, full-time carer Mary hid all the knives in her home. Her husband Richard, nine years after his diagnosis of Alzheimer’s aged 55, had become angry and unpredictable. For the first time, Mary, a former fashion designer, was scared of him.
Over the course of two quick weeks, it became apparent that it was no longer safe for her to live in the same house and in August, she made the heartbreaking decision to move him into a care home . Mary and Richard’s story was one of several told in Channel 4’s hour-long documentary Anna Richardson: Love, Loss & Dementia . Best known for her work presenting headline-grabbing shows on provocative subjects like Naked Attraction and The Sex Education Show , Richardson wanted to shine a light on what she views as another taboo topic: dementia .
“We are not talking about the fact that it’s a crisis,” she said of the disease which brutally entered her life with her father’s diagnosis of vascular dementia. Formerly a leading figure in the Church of England, 83-year-old Jim now lives semi-independently in an assisted living facility. The film opened with Richardson receiving an alert while on holiday – Jim had suffered yet another fall.
Aware that he is still in the relatively early stages of symptoms – he knows who she is and retains his sense of humour (pretending to row a boat as Richardson pushed his wheelchair around his hometown) – she acknowledged what is to come: “Either one day, he will have a catastro.