Fiona Phillips’s husband, Martin Frizzel, has opened up about his frustrations he has encountered since his partner was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease.
The broadcaster, 64, learned that she had the condition, which causes cognitive decline, in 2022 and went public with her diagnosis the following year, in a bid to raise awareness and dismantle stigma.
Phillips, who married Frizzel in 1997, has now documented her experience with the disease in a new book, Remember When: My Life With Alzheimer’s, with the help of her husband and former Daily Mirror editor, Alison Phillips.
Speaking to The Telegraph, Frizzel, the former editor of This Morning, revealed that he only intended to write “a few paragraphs” for the book but ended up writing 24,000 words after his anger about the situation started to simmer.
“I started off writing about what a great woman she is and just how horrible it is and dreadfully unlucky that she is the latest in the long line of her family to get it,” Frizzel explained.
“Then I just got very angry as to what little support there is. You realise that there are about 70,000 people who have early-onset Alzheimer’s, a million or so roughly in the country who have Alzheimer’s, and you realise that there’s not a lot of help out there.
He continued: “As a family, we just kind of get through it and at some point we will need more support, but there’s just nothing really.”
Appearing on This Morning on Friday (July 11), Frizzel shared that Fiona sometimes becomes confused about who he is.
Referring to a recent photo, he said, “She’s looking great and she’s kinda smiling… And what you don’t know is she thought I’d kidnapped her.”
He added she recognises him “most of the time.”
Frizell stepped down from his role as the editor of ITV’s This Morning in 2024 after a decade on the show, in order to focus on “family priorities”.
The journalist recently made the heartbreaking admission that he wished his wife had been diagnosed with cancer rather than Alzheimer’s.
‘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,” he said in another extract from Remember When.
“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.”
