Fiona Phillips has opened up about the debilitating impact of her Alzheimer’s as her husband reflected on his wish for her to have ‘cancer instead’.
The TV presenter, 64, has been candid about her experience with the memory disease since revealing her diagnosis in July 2023.
Two years on, Phillips and her husband of 28 years, Martin Frizell, 65, have shared the ins and outs of their life now (and how much it has transformed) in a new memoir, Remember When: My Life with Alzheimer’s.
Frizell offered a ‘brutally honest’ admission, explaining that he wished she had been diagnosed with cancer instead, in an excerpt included in the Daily Mail.
He added: ‘It’s a shocking thing to say, but at least then she might have had a chance of a cure, and certainly would have had a treatment pathway and an array of support and care packages.
‘But that’s not there for Alzheimer’s. Just like there are no funny or inspiring TikTok videos or fashion shoots with smiling, healthy, in-remission survivors,’ he reflected, adding that post-diagnosis you are just ‘left to cope alone’.
Frizell has now taken on the responsibility of day-to-day life from paying bills to household chores which he used to ‘take for granted’ and brought on board a trained carer to help alleviate some of the intensity from him and their 23-year-old son MacKenzie.
He explained that as of January 2025, he helps Phillips ‘brush her teeth and shower’ and dress herself. As well as eating and drinking.
There have been days when she has demanded to see her late parents in moments of ‘extreme confusion’,, Frizell shared.
Elsewhere in the book, the former GMTV host also shared her own perspective on her deterioration and the difficulties she has faced in accepting it.
She admitted that she finds discussing her life now ‘agonisingly difficult’.
‘Sometimes I get halfway through a sentence and I can’t remember where I was heading with it or the word I was looking for. It feels awful,’ she said, comparing her condition to ‘trying to chase a £5 note that’s fallen out of your purse on a gusty day’.
The couple decided to start telling their friends and family about her Alzheimer’s to explain any ‘unusual behaviour’, something Phillips hadn’t thought she did.
What is early-onset Alzheimer’s disease?
Early-onset Alzheimer’s is also known as young-onset dementia or younger-onset Alzheimer’s. It is the label given to anyone who receives a diagnosis before they turn 65.
According to Alzheimer’s Research UK, an estimated 70,800 people with dementia in the UK have young onset, and Alzheimer’s disease accounts for around one in three cases of young onset dementia.
It is thought at least five in every 100 people with Alzheimer’s are under 65, however the figure may be higher.
According to the NHS, the symptoms of Alzheimer’s can begin with usually minor memory problems, but can develop into:
- confusion, disorientation and getting lost in familiar places
- difficulty planning or making decisions
- problems with speech and language
- problems moving around without assistance or performing self-care tasks
- personality changes, such as becoming aggressive, demanding and suspicious of others
- hallucinations (seeing or hearing things that are not there) and delusions (believing things that are untrue)
- low mood or anxiety
‘But he and the doctors, who I was constantly backwards and forwards to see, would say that I kept repeating myself and that sometimes I forgot what I was doing or where I was going.
‘The strange thing was I had no awareness of that,’ she said.
In November 2024, Frizell announced he was stepping down as editor of ITV’s This Morning after more than a decade in order to support in wife.
At the time, he wrote: ‘Next year I’m expecting my family priorities to change, so I need to free up time for them.’
Meanwhile, Phillips, who lost her mother to Alzheimer’s aged 74 in 2006, has previously spoken about her worry as to how people will ‘perceive’ her.
‘There is still an issue with this disease that the public thinks of old people, bending over a stick, talking to themselves.
‘But I’m still here, getting out and about, meeting friends for coffee, going for dinner with Martin, and walking every day,’ she told The Mirror.
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