Steph & Dom’s secret agony: “We carry pain daily”
The Gogglebox stars reveal their traumatic battle to save their 18-year-old son Max
Gogglebox legends Steph and G Dom Parker are known for their entertaining banter (and boozing) on the hit Channel 4 show, but behind the scenes the so-called “posh couple” have been fighting to find a miracle cure to help their severely disabled son…
DIFFICULT TIME
In moving documentary Steph & Dom: Can Cannabis Save Our Son? the TV icons will explore whether medical cannabis would help Max, who is currently being refused the treatment he needs for his chronic epilepsy. On the show, they meet families in America who claim their children have been cured of seizures after using CBD oil.
“People will probably have a perception of us that we live a very privileged life and that we don’t have a care in the world,” says Steph, 52. “This is far from the truth; we’ve had a great sadness for a very long time. And great pain – and we carry that pain daily. We just hide it very well, through laughter…”
The Parker family live in fear that Max – who’s been on medication since the age of four and who is also autistic – may one day suffer a catastrophic seizure and will never wake up.
Steph adds, “As he reaches adulthood, the risk of this goes up considerably. It’s [epilepsy] damaged his brain and it’s damaged his life. He has a mental age of maybe five or six.
GLIMMER OF HOPE
“It’s not that we keep Max hidden away. We are not the X Factor couple with the sad back story. We’re not defined by it. We can get lost in the reality of his condition, but doing this documentary has brought us together as a family – I’m looking at him more closely and seeing the positives. I know we’re not going to fix him, but now I have a glimmer of hope that something might actually help.”
The couple – who have been married for 21 years and are also parents to Honour, 15 – hope that a new treatment will be made available to them and thousands of other UK families: medically prescribed cannabis oil (also known as CBD), which has been shown to control or even eliminate
epileptic seizures.
In November 2018, the Government passed a law making it legal to prescribe the drug, but is yet to iron out the details.
Dom, 53, says, “We do hope at some stage Max will get it, but a lot of boxes have to be ticked first. If one or two drops of oil could take these things out of his body, then I’d be the happiest man alive.”
A tearful Steph interrupts, “I’d like to think that he could have a social life and friends – and interact with people. But it could be summer 2019 before Max gets his hands on the oil. Almost since the day he was born we’ve done nothing but fight for help and here we are, still fighting. I’m exhausted.”