It took my dad months to accept he had Alzheimer’s
JAMIE ANDERSON, son of legendary Thunderbirds creator Gerry, talks candidly about his late father’s battle with the disease
WHENEVER Jamie Anderson needs advice, one person always pops into his mind. His late father Gerry, best known as the brains behind the hit 1960s TV puppet show Thunderbirds, may have been a creative genius in public but at home he was just a loving father always ready to dish out guidance when it was needed.
“That’s what I miss most about him,” says writer, director and producer Jamie, 31, from Oxfordshire. “He was tremendously supportive of everything I did and if I had a problem with anything he always had something genuinely useful to say.”
It’s nearly four years since Gerry’s death from Alzheimer’s disease at the age of 83, on Boxing Day 2012. For Jamie it was the inevitable conclusion to years of watching his beloved father being dragged down by an incurable disease which robbed him of his warmth, personality and, at times, the love he’d always had for his family.
Yet far from avoiding those difficult memories, Jamie quite literally keeps walking right back to them. He is supporting the Alzheimer’s Society Memory Walk initiative, a simple fundraising scheme that aims to generate over £6million this year by getting more than 100,000 people on their feet.
The walks, which take place all over the country throughout September and October, are designed to be accessible to all ages, rather than endurance athletes. When Jamie starts the Bath Memory Walk on September 18 his father will be very much in his thoughts.
THE pair of them helped launch the first event in 2012, shortly before Gerry’s death and the announcement he had donated his brain to Alzheimer’s research.
“It’s crucial that we raise awareness,” says Jamie. “Most people don’t realise Alzheimer’s kills more people than breast and prostate cancer combined.”
Loved ones first noticed changes in Gerry, who also created hit characters such as Joe 90 and Captain Scarlet, up to a decade before he passed away in his sleep. Yet Jamie and his mother Mary simply put it down to ageing. “The first thing that it affected was his driving,” recalls Jamie.
“I remember he became obsessed with always being in the right-hand lane whenever he was approaching a roundabout, even if turning left.
“He was utterly convinced that was what he had always done, even though it caused quite a few mini road-rage incidents.”
Then there was the time Gerry made soup using the pet dog’s antifungal shampoo.
“Again, we put it down to ageing because it was the same colour as the Thai fish soup we used to have.
“What I realised much later was that it was Alzheimer’s distorting his visual understanding.”
Once Jamie began to suspect there might be something seriously wrong with his father, he and his mother faced a challenging task: how to tell a proud and dignified man who thought he was fine that he might need medical help. Jamie says: “There came a point where it was so obvious that we could not deny it any longer. Mum and I discussed it at length and she said it would be really difficult to get him to understand.
“When someone is in the early stages of Alzheimer’s they don’t like to acknowledge that there might be something wrong.
“It’s left to those around them to deal with the consequences.”
Between them they decided Jamie would highlight their concerns to his father’s GP, who agreed to broach the subject during Gerry’s next routine check-up for diabetes, which he had suffered with for several years. However Jamie says the GP’s handling of it was so tactless it had a catastrophic effect. “She blurted out to him that his son had been to see her and ‘is worried about your brain’. He immediately phoned me and ranted for a good 20 minutes. It wrecked our relationship for the next six months. There was no easy way to deal with the situation and that seemed the best option.”
YET, despite the fallout, the incident did plant the seed in Gerry’s mind that something might be amiss. As the months wore on he gradually started to accept that he might be ill and in 2011 he was officially diagnosed with Alzheimer’s.
From that point Gerry went into rapid decline, displaying the classic hallmarks of the incurable disease: anxiety, aggression and paranoia, which Mary, as his primary carer, had to deal with around the clock.
“It was incredibly difficult for mum,” says Jamie. “I think people have this perception Alzheimer’s only affects old ladies, who then sit in a corner knitting. It’s not like that. It’s the gradual disintegration of someone’s entire personality. When dad was shouting, calling me a terrible person and saying he never liked me, it was heartbreaking.
“It was tough seeing him decline like that. There are moments, when you care for someone so seriously ill, where you don’t always act like a saint. You might lose your temper or shout and then when they’ve gone, you think to yourself, ‘Did I do a good enough job?’”
Gerry went to great lengths to support the Alzheimer’s Society’s quest for better awareness, culminating in his dying request to donate his brain for research.
“I’m hopeful for the future,” says Jamie. “A decade ago Alzheimer’s was rarely discussed in the media. Now there seems to be a higher public profile for the disease. But there’s still a long way to go.”