Veteran newsreader Alastair Stewart has issued a heartbreaking update
The 71-year-old admitted that he “can’t be trusted” to dress himself properly, in particular when it comes to putting on a tie or a pair of shoes.
Stewart, who was the UK’s longest-running news presenter, married his wife Sally back in 1978. The pair have four children together.
“If he is looking for a piece of paper, he will go through every drawer, every cupboard,” Sally said of her husband in an interview with MailOnline.
“A room he has been in will look like a bomb site. He’s also incredibly impatient with devices and appliances…his reaction is, ‘Buy a new one, now’,” she added.
Alastair opened up about the challenges to their relationship, and the adjustments they have had to make as she acts as his carer.
“I find it depressing that she is reduced to the diary-checker, the carer,” he shared.
“I mean, before we went out last night she had to check I had the right shoes on the right feet. I can’t just jump in the car and go to the corner shop. Depression is the bigger challenge than fear.”
He also opened up about the origins of his diagnosis, revealing that he first began to feel “a bit discombobulated” at the beginning of 2023.
“I wasn’t becoming forgetful but things like doing your shoelaces properly – that’s how I wear these lovely moccasins now – making sure your tie was straight, remembering that the call time for your programme is four o’clock and not five o’clock, not turning up early or late, and stuff like that.
“I said ‘I’m really worried I might have dementia, early onset dementia.'”
He continued: “I had a scan and it was like a scene from Casualty or Emergency Ward 10, because the results came back and I had indeed had a series of minor strokes that are called infarct strokes.
“Not the big one … it’s like peppershots. The cumulative effect of that was that I had a diagnosis of early onset vascular dementia.”
