Fiona Phillips’ husband Martin Frizell shares what it’s really like when your spouse gets Alzheimer’s – as friends have all but shunned them and Fiona’s convinced he’s a criminal mastermind
Fiona Phillips has become convinced she’s been kidnapped and is being held against her own will, according to her husband Martin Frizell.
The former GMTV host and Daily Mirror columnist has been deteriorating since being diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s in early 2022. And now as she prepares to release her emotional memoir of the past three years, her husband-of-28-years Martin, 66, reveals things are even worse than many may have realised.
For, he says Fiona, 64, is now existing only “in the present” and even struggles to hold a conversation – a skill which was the core of dazzling TV career. He reveals Fiona will struggle to remember “30 seconds or five minutes” ago and has recently become convinced he is holding her hostage while her late parents – who also had Alzheimer’s – are desperately searching for her.
Martin, the former editor of This Morning, explains says the best thing he can do is play along, because anything else causes her additional distress.
In her new book Remember When…. he writes: “I’d like to tell you Fiona is content in the situation into which she has been forced. But that wouldn’t be the truth. She isn’t – she is frustrated every single day. And depressed.”
He adds: “She constantly says she wants to work, but she knows deep down that she can’t. She knows she cannot hold a conversation and she forgets what she wants to tell people. She will give up and crumple. She tries to fight it, but it’s too hard.”
Martin describes her kidnap fears as the “latest fixation, coming from her clogged-up brain”. They have to go to extreme lengths to help her feel better – and sometimes their youngest son Mackenzie, 23, even gets Fiona her favourite coat and Martin pretends he’s walking her back to her parents, presumably in return for a ransom. Her mother, Amy, actually passed away in 2006, and her father, Neville, was diagnosed shortly after and died in 2012.
“Fiona and I leave the house as if I am taking her home,” explains Martin. “We walk around the block as she loudly proclaims, ‘I’ll never forgive you for tricking me,’ and passers-by stare; then we are back home again, where she goes in and greets Mackenzie as if she hasn’t seen him for days. She has forgotten about her mum and dad and is happy to sit down.”
There’s one thing that does make Fiona her former happy self – listening to The Stylistics – her favourite band from when she was a teenager. “Every day, several times a day, she’ll say, ‘Hey Google, play The Stylistics,’,” recalls Martin in the new book. “She begins to sing, word perfect and I stroke her hair as she says, ‘Please don’t leave me.’”
Martin is adamant he will not sugarcoat what is happening and pretend there is any relief. He’s found fewer and fewer friends have kept in touch and says the invites have all but stopped. He knows Fiona can’t go to a dinner party or one of the swanky events they used to attend as a TV power couple, yet says: “But sometimes it would be nice to be asked.”
It’s a disease which is affecting the whole family. The pair, who married in 1997, have Mackenzie, an aspiring fashion designer, and Nathaniel, 26, who is training to be the Armed Forces. Martin has also told of his agony the first time Fiona failed to recognise their eldest son.
He adds: “Alzheimer’s is the most awful disease. The boys and I are being punished by it. But Fiona is the one having to live it every single day. And it’s relentless.”
Fiona was just 61 when she was diagnosed in early 2022, but had been fearing she would become the latest victim of the disease for years. Both Fiona’s parents and several close family members had all been diagnosed with it. Her parents were affected in very different, but equally disturbing ways.
Doctors explained Fiona hadn’t inherited it from her parents as such, but they had passed down other genetic traits made her ‘predisposed’, or rather more susceptible, to get it. Because of this,Fiona and Martin initially waited to tell her boys after being diagnosed until they were confident they were not also predisposed to the disease.
That doesn’t mean it’s been any easier for them to watch what they mum, the one-time vibrant and confident GMTV star, was going through. ‘It’s tough for them. They see their mum like this and it’s very upsetting,” says Martin. “But what choice do we have but to keep on going?’
Former Mirror columnist Fiona isn’t doing any interviews around her book and Martin is keen to let her words speak for themselves. In an early chapter, she poignantly reveals her fear that she’ll forget the little everyday moments she shares with her sons.
Speaking of her desire to be her former self, she wrote: “I want to watch Chelsea beat Arsenal 3–0 at home. I want our son Nat to come home on leave from the Army and give me one of his bear-like hugs. I want our youngest son Mackenzie to bring me a cup of tea and a biscuit when we sit watching TV together. I want to be me.”
Sadly – as Fiona knew while penning those words – those moments are only going to become harder and harder to have. She bravely chose to share the news of her debilitating and devastating illness in a series of exclusive interviews for The Mirror in July 2023.
In the three-day series, she admitted she had spent years trying to convince herself her low mood and brain fog was caused by something else. – first, long covid and then the menopause.
Remember When: My Life With Alzheimer’s by Fiona Phillips, (Macmillan), is released on July 17