Former GMTV presenter Fiona Phillips initially blamed menopause for her marriage struggles, before being diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer’s.
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.
In an extract from her new book Remember When: My Life With Alzheimer’s, published in the Mail on Sunday, the TV star admitted that her marriage to editor Martin Frizell was “coming under increasing strain”, and she now believes that “the disease was at least partly responsible”.
However, “at the time neither of us could see it”, she added, and Phillips “just became more and more disconnected from Martin and the boys”.
After dealing with “the sense of brain fog and a sense of anxiety that [she] could rarely shake off”, as well as mood swings that made her behaviour “unpredictable”, Phillips started to believe that her symptoms were linked to menopause.
However, things didn’t improve after several months of HRT (hormone replacement therapy) treatment, which is used to alleviate menopause symptoms.
Phillips then consulted a doctor, who asked her to undergo a series of tests, and also had an MRI scan and lumbar puncture.
The consultant then informed her that she had early onset Alzheimer’s at the age of 61.
The couple were initially “shell shocked” by the news, but eventually vowed to “continue to live life ‘as normally as possible’”.
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 dementia.
‘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.”
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