'Caring for my 83-year-old father with dementia is pushing me to the brink'

Anna Richardson is angry. “I’m actually raging,” says the normally sunny anchor of TV shows as diverse as Supersize vs Superskinny, The Big Breakfast and, most infamously, Naked Attraction. And no wonder.

For the last six years, the 54-year-old and her Staffordshire-based family have been pushed to breaking point, caring for her increasingly fragile 83-year-old father Canon Jim Richardson OBE. Following a 2018 diagnosis of vascular dementia, he has suffered a series of transient ischaemic attacks – essentially mini strokes – sparking a heart-breaking cognitive and physical decline that is now transforming the once effervescent linchpin of his community into an isolated, vulnerable shadow of a man prone to regular falls, confusion and crippling memory loss. “I’ve never been so stressed in my life,” admits Anna, who shares Jim’s care with her two brothers Mark and Ben, who also both work full time, and her 81-year-old mother Janet – who was actually divorced from her father 40 years ago.

It’s a daily struggle faced by millions of Britons, with one in three people born in the UK this year expected to develop some form of dementia in their lifetime. It is now officially Britain’s biggest cause of death but, as Anna explores in tonight’s moving Channel 4 documentary Love, Loss and Dementia, the under-resourced and ill-equipped social care system is buckling under the pressure. The end result is over-extended families picking up the slack.

“The problem i.