DEMENTIA BROUGHT
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BY HIS own admission, the last five years have been the strangest and often most “horrible” of Simon McDermott’s life. In 2013, Simon’s father Ted was diagnosed with dementia. What had started with forgetfulness and frustration developed into something altogether more severe and aggressive. He would forget where he was, would fail to recognise Simon and wife Linda, and would lash out in anger at anyone who tried to help him.
The only thing that seemed to ease the pain was singing. As a club singer and Butlin’s redcoat in the 1960s and 70s, Ted – now 80 – had entertained thousands of people and even through the fog of Alzheimer’s he could still recall every word of every song he sang. And so Simon hit upon the idea of putting together a CD of his favourite numbers and taking his father for a drive, during which he could sing to his heart’s content.
“I’d take him out for these long drives just to calm him down and I’d put these backing tracks on and the pair of us would sing along and he’d be fine after that,” says Simon, 40. “And, although he’d have no idea who I was, once he’d calmed down I’d talk to him about his time as a club singer, and it was just a nice respite from it all and a bit like discovering my real dad again, instead of the angry dementia version.”
Simon started recording their drives on a dashboard camera and posting them on to his Facebook page for his mum and friends to see… and then, in July 2016, after a particularly joyous, lung-bursting rendition of Engelbert Humperdinck’s Quando Quando Quando, he was persuaded to upload the video to YouTube.
What happened next was in Simon’s words “completely surreal”. The video was shared thousands of times and within a week Ted McDermott had achieved a greater level of fame as a singer than he could ever have hoped for when he was trying to make a career of it as a young man.
A top 10 single followed and then a crowdfunded album, a Pride of Britain award and a fundraising campaign that has seen Simon and Ted so far raise £150,000 for the Alzheimer’s Society. Now Simon has written a book, published this weekend, in which he tells his father’s life story from his tough upbringing in 1940s Black Country, through his singing career, and eventual diagnosis with Alzheimer’s.
THE result is a moving testament to a life at once both ordinary and extraordinary – made all the more so by the meticulous research carried out by Simon, as he tracks down former friends, bandmates and colleagues of his father’s in an attempt to uncover the man he was before falling victim to dementia.
“Growing up, my dad and I were close but then during my teenage years we drifted apart a bit as I think everyone does at that age,” says Simon. “It sounds weird to say this but I guess dementia’s brought us closer together. Even though dad doesn’t know who I am any more I’ve found out so much about him by doing the book.
“For example, I always knew he was in a band called The Starliners and actually meeting this guy who he was in the band with and talking to him about what dad was like, it was such an eye-opener, and incredibly emotional. I’d come away from meeting these people and I’d be in tears. There’s my dad who has got no idea who I am and there I am hearing these stories from his past.
“To be honest it’s been like therapy for me. It’s been really awful for the last few years and this has really helped me remember that Alzheimer’s is not who he is. You get so many horrible days when dad’s being really aggressive but then you get these