Fiona Phillips’s husband, Martin Frizzel, has opened up about the frustrations he has encountered since his partner was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease.
The broadcaster, 64, learnt that she had the condition, which causes cognitive decline, in 2022. She went public with her diagnosis the following year in a bid to raise awareness and tackle stigma surrounding the disease.
Phillips, who married Frizzel in 1997, has documented her experience in a new book titled Remember When: My Life With Alzheimer’s, written with the help of her husband as well as her 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 his wife’s book, but ended up writing 24,000 words when his anger about the situation began 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 Phillips sometimes becomes confused over who she is. Referring to a recent photo taken of the presenter, 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 that she recognises him as her husband “most of the time”.
Frizell stepped down from his role as the editor of 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 wrote 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.”
Frizell and Phillips share two sons: Nathaniel, 26, and Mackenzie, 23.
