Why you future MUST proof your brain
In a deeply moving interview, Angela Rippon shares what her mother’s dementia taught her about keeping your mind sharp
Angela RIPPon, the journalist and television presenter, is happy to admit that she can still do the splits at 73. ‘Yes, really,’ she says.
But then anyone who saw her high-kicking on the Morecambe and Wise Christmas special when she was a serious BBC newsreader in 1976 knows she likes to confound expectations.
and now, at a time when so few women of her age are on tV, she is fronting a stream of programmes such as consumer rights show Rip off Britain and How to Stay Young, a series first broadcast in 2016 and reprised last year, where she and tV doctor Chris van tulleken investigated how to halt the ageing process.
Van tulleken is half her age and yet she was the one dashing about the tennis court whacking ferocious forehands. Her jiving in a gym, regal in leggings and pearl earrings, to demonstrate the rejuvenating power of dance, was a joy to watch. Her refusal to age seems to be her great selling point.
It’s all part of her mantra: ‘ keep moving’, inspired by eileen Fowler, the Sixties fitness guru, whom she met as a young reporter for Westward television. ‘She was in her 60s and she bounced into the studio, touched her toes and said, “You’ve got to keep moving! Your body is a machine. It’s got millions of moving parts, keep them oiled, keep them moving and you won’t seize up.” ’
and keep moving, keep busy, is the message of her latest project the Memory activity Book: Practical Projects to Help With Memory, loss and dementia. Rippon, an ambassador for the alzheimer’s Society and whose late mother, edna, had dementia, has written the foreword.
We meet in the publisher’s office where she looks and sounds exactly as she does on television: perfect enunciation, arched eyebrows, ‘dressed hair’ (her hair routine — washing, curling, setting with hair spray — takes 15 minutes daily).
today, she’s in a stripey shirt dress, which she says she couldn’t possibly wear on television because ‘the stripes would strobe’.
Her style, dictated clearly more by cameras than fashion, sometimes hits the headlines. In 2015, she was papped in black leather trousers and studded boots under the retort: ‘no one will ever convince me I’m too old for leather.’ She beams when I raise the subject. ‘ I’ve got suede boots that come up to here, leather boots that come up to here. I wear what I want.
‘there’s a wonderful quote from Coco Chanel: “I don’t care what you think about me, because I don’t think about you at all.” that’s my message to the fashion police.’ SHe
says she decided to support the book because, when her mother was diagnosed with dementia in 2004 at the age of 82, she didn’t know how to help her. ‘ You find you are frozen. You think, how do I deal with it? I had to learn by trial and error and it was a very sharp and, at times, difficult learning curve for me.’
the book is jam-packed with activities from planting a window box to watching an old movie and planning an outing. even a picture of a car is rife for conversational potential, it suggests. It is thorough and informative, even listing different types of dementia. But I wonder how people with alzheimer’s will cope with making a nature diary or growing microgreens in muffin cases.
When you get your diagnosis, ‘it’s the beginning of a slightly different way of life, but it’s certainly not the end,’ explains Rippon. ‘People with dementia can still live long, full and valuable lives. Still drive a car — for a while — go to the cinema, to football, the pub, still enjoy what grandchildren and friends are doing.’ even when dementia really takes hold, there are still options. ‘For example, if you liked gardening and can no longer do it, you can still enjoy walking around a garden centre looking at the flowers. and smelling — here’s a bag of mint, smell it and remember you used to grow that. Here’s a bunch of lavender, what does the perfume remind you of?’
She is sounding very upbeat. But isn’t it very upsetting when your mother or father, or someone you love, no longer recognises you, I ask.
‘of course it is. But what you’ve got to remember is it’s not all about you,’ she replies. ‘It’s all about them. and still being there for them.’ Rippon was born in Plymouth, devon, in 1944, the only child of John, an engineer and former Royal Marine; and edna, a trained seamstress who drove lorries during the war.
‘She was a very feisty lady, my mum,’ says Rippon. ‘ She loved working.’ the job she most enjoyed was as a manageress for Wedgwood, the fine bone china company. ‘She had a weakness for fine china. If we went anywhere, she would automatically pick up a plate and turn it over to see who made it.
‘When I got my oBe, friends gave a dinner party in their home and I remember sitting around a circular table and seeing Mummy pick up a plate. I thought, “no, Mummy, please don’t.” and she turned it over and saw it was limoges [the French company that made fine porcelain now sought by collectors]. It was like she’d died and gone to heaven.’
She was close to both her parents, and clearly adored her father. they were in touch almost daily and she says he’s the reason she’s in such good shape.
‘twice a week after my father retired, he’d go for a walk from home on the edge of dartmoor and he would walk for three hours, stop, have lunch and walk back. When he was 80, he decided he should be a little more circumspect and he started to only walk for two hours twice a week. He was fit and I’ve always wanted to be fit.’
Her parents had been together for more than 60 years when her father died of a sudden heart attack, aged 86, in 2003. Rippon and her mother were heartbroken and she believes her mother’s illness started soon after.
‘I lived at home for a month after dad died and mum had about six tIas [transient ischaemic attacks] within two or three weeks. She would collapse and pass out and then not know where she was when she came around.
‘there is no question that it affected
her brain. After that, things started to change. She gradually become very argumentative and black was white and white was black, and of course I used to argue with her. “No! Mummy, it’s not!” And we’d have a row.’
And then when Edna was diagnosed with dementia a year later, ‘ it was like someone turning on the light for me. I went, yes, that’s it!’
At first, Rippon cared for her mother in her home in Devon. She paid for a live-in nurse and went backwards and forwards from London. Her aim was to make her life more bearable.
‘I’d show her photographs and took her out to see friends. The most important thing was recognising that she was inhabiting a parallel universe,’ she explains. ‘And I had to go to her universe and not expect her to continue to live in mine. For example, she would say, “I’m going to have tea with your granny this afternoon.” Well, my grandmother died when I was about five.
‘ If I’d said, “But Mummy, Granny’s dead,” she would have been really upset. Whereas it was so much easier for me to say, “Really? Are you going to have a cream tea this afternoon, then?” and change the subject.’
But as the illness progressed, her mother became increasingly agoraphobic and distressed.
‘People suffering from dementia get very upset and frightened and, as a carer, you have to listen and react appropriately. I learned there was no point in getting upset when she was particularly vitriolic to me. But just to let it wash over me.’ Edna spent the last year of her life in a care home, where she died aged 88, in 2009. ‘Mum knew who I was until she died. I was with her. She said: “Angela, what’s happening?” She knew me, but she didn’t know anybody else.’
The good news is Angela’s brain is the same as a 40-yearold’s. She had it scanned for a BBC documentary, The Truth About Dementia.
She believes her job as a journalist helps to keep her sharp, although she now admits how little she used her brain during her five years as a newsreader.
‘Everyone assumes that when you’re a newsreader, you’re the top of the pyramid, the face of the national news, which in a way you are, but when I was reading the news I was just reading the news.
‘There wasn’t an opportunity to do interviews in-between like there is now or to use that part of your brain that as a journalist is inquisitive. You just became an automated Autocue reader.’
She now strives to keep her brain challenged — ‘one of the most important things you can do’ — with books and puzzles. ‘I go to the theatre, I go to concerts and listen to music. I meet people and I talk to people.’
She divorced her childhood sweetheart, Christopher Dare, in 1989, after 25 years together. There have been other relationships since, but she has not remarried.
She is evangelical about exercise. Her straight back and flexibility is a legacy of ballet lessons from the age of five to 17. She took up horse-riding in her 30s, and now plays tennis. She also spends 15 minutes every morning doing a series of exercises based on yoga, Pilates and dance. ‘ Even in the smallest hotel room, I can always find somewhere or some way of exercising.’
I ask about the sit-to-rise test, which she demonstrated on How To Stay Young (see box, left). It sounds easy, but requires an extraordinarily complex degree of strength, balance and co-ordination and is supposed to be a good predictor of how long you’ll live and how well you’re ageing.
Rippon scored nine out of ten which means she’ll live a long life (below six, don’t ask).
Naturally, she has no plans to retire. ‘I can’t think of anything I’d do in life that would be as much fun as what I’m doing in work.’
Her message? ‘ Keep doing what you enjoy doing for as long as you can — and if what you’re doing doesn’t give you any personal satisfaction, or pride or joy, find something else that does.’