Carmarthen Journal

I’ll probably be grateful for the rest of my life for having had a massive meltdown...

As he releases his latest spy novel, ITV News at Ten presenter Tom Bradby talks to HANNAH STEPHENSON about his anxiety, ‘rebooting himself’ and his refusal to be drawn on the royals

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ITV NEWS AT TEN anchor Tom Bradby, friend of the royals, seasoned correspond­ent and documentar­y-presenter, confesses he’s enjoying life in lockdown with his wife Claudia and three grown-up children at home near Winchester.

“But then you come to work and dip your head in a bucket load of misery,” he laments.

“It’s odd living with an allconsumi­ng news story that is killing a lot of people, with the frisson that you could get it and die yourself. It’s really depressing.”

His calm, friendly demeanour belies huge anxieties which led to what he calls a meltdown two years ago, manifestin­g itself in chronic insomnia, which resulted in him being signed off work for three months while he tried to sort out his mental health.

As an ITN correspond­ent for the best part of 30 years, from spells covering Ireland and Asia, where he was shot and seriously injured while covering a riot in Jakarta, to becoming royal correspond­ent and political editor, you would think there wasn’t much that fazed him.

“It happened very suddenly, but looking back, I’d been slipping for a long time,” Tom, 53, reflects. His mother had died and he’d spent a lot of time and emotional energy supporting his father until he died, which sparked the TV newsman to worry about further loss.

“I used to be awake till dawn, then it would happen again and then I very quickly went into complete panic.”

This chronic insomnia lasted two weeks.

“There was a moment when I was curled up in a ball on the floor outside our bedroom and my wife came out to me, saying, ‘Don’t worry, we’ll get through this.’ I was saying, ‘I’m never going to sleep again.’

“You get to a very dark place quickly because you convince yourself you’ll never sleep again, that you are going mad and that you will lose everything.”

He was prescribed antidepres­sants – which he still takes to regulate his sleep – and saw a psychiatri­st every week during his time off. He still catches up with him when he needs to.

So, has covering the pandemic brought back any of the previous anxieties?

“I think I’ll probably be grateful for the rest of my life for having had a massive meltdown which forced me to reboot my mental operating systems at vast pain and expense,” he says now.

“I went through a very intense rebooting process but the one advantage of that is that you’re much more mentally resilient. I’m much more accepting of what life’s going to throw at me and that counts for coronaviru­s as well.”

In between presenting the news, Tom has also become a bestsellin­g spy thriller writer.

His eighth novel, Double Agent, a sequel to his bestseller Secret Service, sees senior MI6 officer Kate Henderson become embroiled in a plot in which a Russian defector offers her conclusive evidence that the British prime minister is a spy working for Moscow.

Len Deighton’s ‘Game, Set and Match’ Cold War thrillers provided the inspiratio­n for his love of the genre, he recalls.

“They were set in Cold War Berlin and London and were incredibly atmospheri­c, brilliantl­y written and full of complicati­on, grey skies and double crosses.

“Then the Cold War went away and those kinds of thrillers disappeare­d.

“Writers who wanted to write the type of thriller I do, where there’s a rich political backdrop, struggled a bit.

“Then, as a gift to writers but not to humanity, the Cold War came back. The Russian president decided that

he wanted, in a very muscular way, to restore Russia’s sphere of influence and take on the west.

“So you’ve got this new Cold War which is, if anything, greyer and more complicate­d than the last.”

His protagonis­t Kate Henderson suffers from some of the issues which Tom has faced, including insomnia and a predisposi­tion to anxiety, something he wrote about in Secret Service when he was going through his own mental turmoil.

“When I look back, I’d written Secret Service about five months before I had to be signed off work. With very little psychologi­cal self-knowledge, I was creating an alter ego, writing a character who

was on the way to having a breakdown, even though I had no concept that that was what was happening to me.”

He has learned now not to worry too much about the things you can’t control, or about fate, he says.

“Worrying about what threats are going to come round the corner tomorrow often makes people determined to try to control their fate by being driven and bullish. The problem is that no-one controls their fate.”

He treats writing as a hobby and is half way through Triple Cross, the third book in the series. The trilogy has been optioned by a producer and he’s hoping it will end up as a TV series.

After going through his own crisis, he says: “I do less. I’m careful not to overface myself and I think about things differentl­y.

“I don’t worry about what the reviewers are going to say about my book or if it’s going to get into the bestseller list.

“I’ve trained myself to live for today more.”

His profile was raised last year thanks to his interviews with the Duke and Duchess of Sussex during the making of the documentar­y Harry & Meghan: An African Journey, in which the couple laid bare their unhappines­s. Today, although he is still friends with both Harry and William, he is keen to distance himself from the debate.

“The anxiety around that was that you don’t want to let anyone down.

“I know Harry and Meghan, and William, and I found myself dragged into a maelstrom which I didn’t particular­ly enjoy and which was quite stressful.

“You find yourself wanting to do the right thing, which becomes very difficult because you become caught in someone else’s argument.” He won’t be drawn on how he feels the Sussexes have been treated by both the press and the royal family.

“I think I’ve said all I’m going to say on that.

“I’m a working journalist and not going to get involved with their battle with the press. It’s not my argument.

“They have got their story to tell and one day they may tell it. I just don’t want to be involved any more.” His Covid-19 bulletins may be depressing, but he is much more aware of how he can avoid plumbing the depths of despair again.

“The way out of any mental health crisis is to concentrat­e on today and this minute and try to worry a lot less about what’s going to happen tomorrow. “Today the sun is shining, who knows what’s going to happen tomorrow? I could be hit by a car.

“There are other things I’m more likely to die of than the coronaviru­s.”

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 ??  ?? Tom, who was at the Royal wedding with his wife, Claudia, left, remains silent over the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’ battle with the press
Tom, who was at the Royal wedding with his wife, Claudia, left, remains silent over the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’ battle with the press
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 ??  ?? ■ Double Agent by Tom Bradby is published by Bantam Press, priced £12.99
■ Double Agent by Tom Bradby is published by Bantam Press, priced £12.99

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