Richard Madeley has revealed he has a ‘very addictive personality’ that led to him smoking three packs of cigarettes a day until he was 40
Richard Madeley has revealed he used to secretly smoke 60 cigarettes a day – and shared the one thing that finally made him quit the unhealthy habit.
The 69-year-old presenter, who shot to fame presenting TV shows with his wife Judy Finnigan, 77, confessed to having a ‘very addictive personality’. This is why he never tried drugs, as he was already so hooked on smoking.
Opening up to Busted star Matt Willis on his On The The Mend podcast, Richard said he’d “never even smoked a joint”. Explaining why, he told Matt: “I was a very heavy smoker until I was 40. At one point I was on 60 – 3 packs a day – which is just ridiculous.
“I have a very addictive personality. I knew that – and cigarettes proved that to me – and so I’ve always been terrified of the heavier stuff. I mean, I drink a bit, I certainly drink wine. But I’m okay with it.”
In reference to Matt’s own struggles with drugs, Richard continued: “In terms of cocaine or pot, as we used to call it, I’ve always steered clear because it terrifies me. And I have a horrible feeling that I would fall into the same trap as you did. I don’t trust myself, so I’ve never gone near it.”
Saying cigarettes in their own way are just as dangerous as drugs, Richard said he started smoking when he was 16 once he got his first job as a reporter on a local newspaper “because everybody smoked” back in the early Seventies.
He continued: “It got to the point very quickly where you were covering a story, you came back to your typewriter at your desk, and you couldn’t write your story without getting a fag on the go, so you were chain smoking as you were typing. But I became horribly addicted to it.”
Recalling the moment that finally made him quit, Richard said it was interviewing Nigella Lawson’s first husband John Diamond, who was a journalist for The Guardian and The Times, who passed away at the age of 47 in 2001.
Richard shared: “He got throat and mouth cancer because of smoking when he was in his late 30s or early 40s – and he was dying – and he was writing a diary about dying for The Guardian.
“It was a tragedy, and yet it was gripping the way he talked about his shortening days and his suffering. And he came on This Morning when he probably had about three weeks to live.
“By that stage he had half his tongue cut away, because of the tumours, and he’d had a lot of his oesophagus taken away. He was in a bad way. He was constantly dribbling down one side of his mouth. And he was very hard to understand because of the surgery on his tongue.
“About halfway through this live interview, I said to him something slightly foolish like, ‘John, you’re in this predicament because of smoking’. And he said – and we didn’t get any complaints because you couldn’t really hear the F-word – ‘Of course I f***ing am’.
“I went back to my dressing room, reached up onto the top shelf of my wardrobe and pulled my packet of Benson & Hedges down and looked at it. I took out the four or five that were left and I flushed them down the toilet. I knew that was it – I could not allow myself to end like that, if I could do anything to stop it. And I’ve never had a cigarette since.”
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