This cruel disease has stolen my dad’s mind so we must discuss it
Comedian says he expects criticism over heart-rending TV programme about his father’s rare form of dementia
WHEN the comedian David Baddiel met the neurologist who had examined his father Colin he was told that the then 74-year-old had all the symptoms of a rare form of dementia called Pick’s Disease. These include swearing, sexual disinhibition, rudeness, apathy, impatience and selfishness.
“I said, ‘Sorry, does he have a disease or have you just met him?’,” deadpans his son in a TV documentary about Colin’s condition to be screened on Monday evening. It turns out that Colin has always been an irascible individual but Pick’s amplifies his existing traits and in The Trouble With Dad, David and his older brother Ivor turn an acute eye on their father’s tragicomic life.
David, 52, is not blind to the ethical issues involved in filming a subject who is not only past his dignified best but also lacks the ability to give fully-informed consent. However he believes such considerations are outweighed by the need to publicise the effects of dementia which is “the largest killer of older people, bigger than cancer”.
He says: “Both of us had reservations about the programme. I wouldn’t have wanted to put my dad on the telly if he was pitiful. In fact he’s weirdly in control – high status, sparky and funny, all within having dementia. He wins.
“There is no situation where it is straightforwardly OK to put someone on camera who is not totally informed about it because of dementia, as is the case here. I’m perfectly happy if people want to say, ‘That is not OK’, because maybe it isn’t. But the alternative is that nobody ever talks about this and we must. It’s an epidemic.”
It certainly is. There are 850,000 people living with dementia in the UK, according to the Alzheimer’s Society. One in six people over the age of 80 have it and someone new develops dementia every three minutes.
Less than five per cent of these will get Pick’s Disease, which is caused by a shrinkage of the frontal and temporal anterior lobes of the brain, but it is one of the crueller forms of dementia.
THE film opens with David driving to see his father at his home in north London. It is clear that he approaches such visits with some trepidation. “He’s very inappropriate,” he says. “We can’t take the children round. He’d swear and he’s quite liable to say something sexual to my daughter.”
He adds: “What’s slightly upsetting is that Colin is their last grandparent and he’s not exactly the cuddly grandparent type.” There is a vivid illustration of this when David arrives at the house. “Are you alright?” he asks. “I’m dead,” responds his father.
We are soon given a good example of the sort of behaviour that got Colin banned from a nearby Jewish day-care home. Within the first few minutes of the visit, David is referred to as “a f ***** g idiot”, “a total tit”, “a pain in the a**e” and “a big lump of turd”.
That said, he gets off lightly compared to the unfortunate woman who came to the house when they were making shiva – a Jewish mourning ceremony – for his late mother Sarah.
The woman extended her hand to Colin in condolence, saying, “I wish you long life”. To which he replied: “I wish you would stay after everyone else has gone so I can rape you.” As David warned, it’s x-rated stuff.
All in all, there’s quite a lot of gallows humour round at the Baddiels’. When Ivor reminds Colin that chopped liver is what he has said he would order for his last meal on earth, David chips in saying he’d better eat it because he is going in front of a firing squad afterwards.
We are also introduced to two other families who got in touch with Baddiel after he started mentioning his father’s condition in his shockingly frank stage show My Family: Not The Sitcom. Their experiences show how stressful living with a Pick’s sufferer can be.
When David and Ivor arrive to see Ken, who is looked after by his wife and daughter, they are serenaded by the former band member with an Italian love song. But we also see evidence of Ken’s aggressive side and his carer Wendy points out: “Lots of carers won’t look after people with Pick’s Disease. They don’t like the embarrassment.”
The first indications that Colin might be developing dementia came 10 years ago when he started becoming forgetful. Two years later he was diagnosed with Pick’s. In 2014 David had to break the news to Colin that his wife had died suddenly.
“Initially he was unbelievably shocked and upset,” he recalls. “Then 45 minutes later we had to tell him again and that carried on for the whole day.”
David and Ivor’s younger brother Dan returned from New York, where he had been living, to care for their father but after months of verbal abuse he returned to the US. Today Colin is looked after by round-the-clock agency carers.
A scientist by profession, he was never a demonstrative dad. After gaining a PhD in chemistry, he had dreamed of a career as a research chemist and winning the Nobel Prize. Instead he joined Unilever and ended up in middle management before being made redundant at the age of 42. After that, he enterprisingly switched to selling Dinky Toys at Grays Antique Market in Mayfair.
Given Colin’s love of cars, David and his brother thought a trip in a Rolls-Royce on his 82nd birthday might bring him out of his shell. A sleek Silver Cloud duly pulled up outside his terraced house to take him for a spin, but when Colin is asked if he knows what car it is, he says, “Does it matter?”
But there is at least one heartwarming milestone. When an offscreen voice says to Colin, “Your sons don’t think you love them”, he replies, “That’s a load of b ****** s”.
It’s a response that David will treasure for the rest of his days. “That’s my dad finding a way to say he loves us because he’d never be able to say it in a sentimental, positive way,” he says. “He could only say it in a defensive, reactive, sweary way and it is quite an important moment in my life.”
Over the course of David’s documentary we witness Colin’s slow decline to the point where he can hardly bring himself to bother to swear. But during a Christmas drink at a local pub, there is a sign he hasn’t lost his spark completely.
“Have you got a match?” asks David, feeding him a line. “Yes,” replies Colin, “Your face and my a**e”. His son bursts out laughing and says ruefully: “It’s still there.”
The Trouble With Dad is on Channel 4 on Monday at 9pm.