Dame Barbara Windsor
How her bravery is changing the Alzheimer’s conversation
When you think of Dame Barbara Windsor and hospitals, it’s hard not to picture her in the pink uniform and black stockings of saucy nurse Sandra May who sends poor bedbound Sid James’s blood pressure through the roof in Carry On Doctor.
But yesterday’s news that Dame Barbara, one of our favourite leading ladies, is living with Alzheimer’s disease has changed that mental picture for good.
Indeed, by revealing her diagnosis, Dame Barbara has shaken up all our fondest reminiscences of her – from
Carry On cutie to Eastenders matriarch via Broadway and the West End – even as she admits to losing her own memories.
The 80-year-old’s mental deterioration began in 2009, her husband Scott Mitchell revealed yesterday, when he noticed she was struggling to learn lines as easily as before. A variety of cognitive tests, a brain scan and a lumbar puncture led to a diagnosis of dementia in April 2014. Even so, the veteran actor continued to work up until 2016, when her character of Peggy Mitchell in Eastenders was killed off by mutual consent with the director, one of the few to be told the truth about Windsor at that point.
Mitchell said the couple have gone public only now to counter rumours about her deteriorating health. In an interview with The Sun, he explained: “Since her 80th birthday last August, a definite continual confusion has set in, so it’s becoming a lot more difficult for us to hide.
“I want us to be able to go out and, if something isn’t quite right, it will be
OK because people will know that she has Alzheimer’s and will accept it for what it is.”
He added: “I hope speaking out will help other families dealing with loved ones who have this cruel disease. I want the public to know because they are naturally very drawn to Barbara, and she loves talking to them.”
Their honesty is truly admirable. Dementia affects 850,000 people in the UK, according to the Alzheimer’s Society, with that figure said to hit one million by 2025. Yet, there is still no cure, and dementia research is desperately underfunded.
The illness doesn’t just affect those with it. Carers and loved ones make the point frequently that there is inadequate support – both practically and emotionally, especially if the dementia is associated with severe mood swings and aggressive behaviour. Many elderly people are also terrified that they will have to sell their homes to pay for care.
No wonder, then, this is such a taboo illness. The Alzheimer’s Association has already applauded the couple’s decision to go public, saying: “Stigma around dementia still exists and we’re here to support everyone with a concern.”
Dame Barbara’s fellow celebrities have been quick to make the point that her revelation will make conversations around Alzheimer’s easier to have. Ross Kemp, who played her son Grant in Eastenders, said: “I hope that by talking openly, it will make it easier for others to talk about this disease.”
Certainly, no one can deny there is a positive effect from this kind of celebrity news. When Kylie Minogue opened up about her breast cancer in May 2005, there was an increase in referrals and mammograms almost at once. Following Angelina Jolie’s 2013 revelation that she had undergone a prophylactic double mastectomy (after learning she carried the BRCA gene which substantially increases the risk of aggressive breast and ovarian cancer), there was a corresponding rise in the number of BRCA tests among women.
And the announcement in March that BBC Breakfast’s Bill Turnbull has prostate cancer led to a surge in Google searches around the disease.
At the time, Martin Ledwick, Cancer Research UK’S head information nurse, said: “Talking about illness can help stop it from becoming a lonely experience. Celebrities who speak out also help raise awareness of the disease and the importance of knowing your body and going to the doctor if you notice any unusual changes.”
The experiences of Kylie, Angelina and Bill have definitely changed the national conversation on cancer. Can Dame Barbara’s news change the way we think and talk about dementia?
One could argue there have been other well-known names affected by dementia before: Baroness Thatcher and Ronald Reagan both died with the disease. Those living with it include actress Prunella Scales and The Gentle Touch star Jill Gascoine. But Dame Barbara becoming the latest unwilling recruit to the legion of sufferers is different somehow – more touching, more real. Her revelation may cut through to her generation, the people most likely to show symptoms, but for whom
‘She’s absolutely thrilled to bits that there’s been a positive response from the public’
“keeping buggering on”, in the wartime vernacular, has long been a way of life.
As an actress, although nominated for a Tony on Broadway (for Oh, What a Lovely War! in the Sixties) and starring in the West End with Vanessa Redgrave in The Threepenny Opera, she always seems most comfortable playing ordinary British women with no airs or graces. Offstage, too, her colourful life – the costermonger father who rejected her, relationships with Reggie Kray and George Best, the three marriages – have combined to make her seem positively unsinkable in the very best-of-british, grin-and-bear-it fashion.
Moreover, at 80, Dame Barbara didn’t have to reveal her condition. Having delighted us all for 67 years, since she first stepped on to the stage at 13, did she really owe the public this uncomfortable truth? Another celebrity might have discreetly stepped out of the public eye.
But, then, that wouldn’t be the showbiz trooper we have known, loved and sometimes identified with all these years.
By allowing her news to become public, she has shown that it is possible to work at the job you love with a diagnosis of dementia, even when your memory is a tool of the trade. And by letting us see that dementia doesn’t take over the story altogether, that we and those closest to us can still have the power to define ourselves, she is giving us a rare vision from inside the disease.
Dame Barbara still “knows who she is, her history, what she’s done and how much the public love her. She’s totally aware of what’s happened. She’s absolutely thrilled to bits that there’s been a positive response from the public,” according to a friend.
And why wouldn’t there be? How unsurprising that even when faced with such a tough break, she would cheerfully Carry On. How lucky we are to have her as a dementia champion, a heroine, once again, who somehow encapsulates her moment.