Well I Know Now with Pippa Kelly

I first encountered Ian Donaghy, aka Big Ian, through his then 10-year-old daughter Annie. She was telling an audience of 800 about her grandma who developed Alzheimer’s at 58. Nana, she said, is still nana despite her condition – she still dances to the radio, ice-skates backwards and lets her watch TV programmes no matter how dreadful they are. “Nana forgets,” she said, “so I remember”...

A few years ago I stumbled across a wonderful local project initiated by a group of church elders. Launched in the village of Debenham in Suffolk in 2009, its aim was simple: to care for older, vulnerable people in the community where they belonged, so as to avoid them having to leave their neighbourhood, their loved ones, all that was well-known and comforting, to go and live in a care home...

Carol Sargent is a pharmaceutical scientist turned social entrepreneur from Leicestershire. Holidays had always been important to her and her family, but when her mum was diagnosed with dementia in 2007 all that changed.   Searching for holiday cottages that would be suitable for her Edinburgh-based parents she discovered that there weren’t any. Carol had already scal...

Trevor Salomon knows first hand the difference that other people’s attitudes can make. When his wife was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s aged 56 she was working at Sainsbury’s. He says that if they’d fired her then he would have had to accept it.   But they didn’t. They bent over backwards to keep her on, even when the disease robbed her of many everyday skills – the Sainsbury...

Grace Meadows knows the enormous power of music, not only for those with dementia but for children with autism, for women about to give birth and those who’ve just become mums, for adults with severe mental health conditions and youngsters with profound and multiple learning disabilities. A musician herself, she believes everyone is musical. “We all have a heartbeat,” so we all have a pulse a...

Full disclosure, today’s guest Wendy Mitchell is one of my all-time favourite people. She is positive, witty, resilient, genuine and wise. She is the author of Somebody I Used To Know, a ground-breaking memoir that was selected as Radio 4’s Book of the Week, chosen as one of the Times’ newspaper’s books of the year, and made it onto the Sunday Times best-seller list. She is also living w...

Karen Penny is a powerhouse, a force of nature, a walking Wonder Woman. Over the last two and a half years she’s covered ten and a half thousand miles, got through ten pairs of boots, ten hats, one thousand custard creams, three birthdays and two wedding anniversaries.  And single-handedly raised £126,000 – and counting – for Alzheimer’s Research UK. I’m not sure which is...

In this bonus episode I talk to Jorg Roth who, in My Life Films, has created something very special for people with dementia and their families.  As with all the best ideas, it’s simple yet effective. Jorg has come to dementia not as a carer or medic, or a professional from the social care world, but as a successful film maker with a wealth of experience.  He’s a creative with...

This week’s guests are three highly creative, very successful men who are on a mission to help those with dementia lead happier, easier, more fulfilled lives.  Their latest collaboration is a colourful one with a powerful past that stretches back to the 18th century when trades unions were illegal and women’s votes were a long way off.  They are: the Bard of Barnsley aka Ian McMillan, a...

Lenny White, the world’s first dementia-friendly barber, lives in Northern Ireland where, at the time of recording, the date for the reopening of salons and spas had yet to be announced but it will surely be very soon. Before the pandemic hit, Lenny took his skills – and all the trappings of his cut-throat profession – around the UK and as far afield as America and Canada, setting up shop in...

For the past 12 years, since her mum was diagnosed with, first mild cognitive impairment and then Alzheimer’s, Rosanne Corcoran has been her main carer, and in 2015 her mum moved in with her and her family. For Rosanne is also a wife and a mother to two daughters. Before she had to give it up, her career was in real estate. For this week’s podcast she spoke to me from her home, thre...

George Coxon is the owner and director of two small care homes in Devon. Pottles Court, which has to have the best care home name EVER, and Summercourt, both of which live by the philosophy of homely homes for life. When my guest and I talked he told me, in no uncertain terms, that people who come to live in Pottles Court and Summercourt do just that: they arrive and move...

Costa-award-winning author Keggie Carew and I chat about her dad and his dementia, about the twists and turns of family life, about forgiveness and about that strange, intangible thing called love. All themes that are skilfully woven into Dadland as its mesmerising narrative flits about in time.  Dadland tells the story of Keggie’s father, Lieutenant Colonel Tom Carew, a dashing maverick...

My mum adored Nobby Stiles. She didn’t watch much football, but she loved the cheeky chappy with his famous gap-toothed grin who, having played every minute of England’s victorious 1966 World Cup, celebrated his team’s 4-2 win over Germany by dancing a jig on the Wembley pitch with the trophy in one hand and his false teeth in the other.  His son John, my guest in this episode, says that when...

Peter Berry and Deb Bunt met by chance – through the spin of the wheel one might say – in Sax Velo, a cycling shop in Suffolk in 2018. Deb (together with husband Martin) had recently retired and moved to the market town of Saxmundham. Peter, a Suffolk man through and through, took over his father’s timber business; for him the trees and woods of his county are as familiar as old friends...

International soprano Lesley Garrett has delighted the world’s biggest audiences for over 40 years – from London’s Royal Opera House to America’s Hollywood Bowl. She’s performed with every leading orchestra as well as with the likes of Bryan Ferry and the Eurythmics, with whom she sang on the eve of the millennium, and has produced over a dozen best-selling albums. She’s also a familiar...

Sarah Reed was an award-winning creative producer and single mother of two, when two events shattered her world.  The first was a brush with death when a burst appendix left her unconscious for nine hours in A & E, followed by a four-day stint in intensive care. Four weeks later her dad called to say that her mum, Mary, had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease.  Sarah de...

Mike Parish has been with his partner Tom Hughes for 45 years. Theirs is a love story, and I’ve found researching their lives, witnessing the tenderness, concern and pride that flows between them – very moving. And a reminder of the beauty to be found in us flawed human beings. But their story also has an ugly side. For much of their lives these two individuals have been the victims...

My guest this week is the chief executive of the Alzheimer’s Society, Kate Lee.  As well as being a CEO, Kate’s a wife, mother and daughter. Her 80-year-old mum’s vascular dementia is now so advanced that she lives in a nursing home and can’t talk; the only way Barbara can show her daughter that she loves her is to hold her hand. At the moment, of course, along with thousands of oth...

Author, journalist and campaigner Nicci Gerrard is a pocket dynamo of warmth and energy.  She speaks quickly, her lyrical, thought-provoking words tumbling out of her mouth, compelling us to see things in new and different ways.   In 2014 she co-founded John’s Campaign with Julia Jones. Its aim is simple: “that the carers of those with dementia should have the same rights...

Dr Jennifer Bute regards the dementia with which she was diagnosed in 2009 not as a life-shattering disaster but a gift – to use her words, “a glorious opportunity”. She is a remarkable individual who, despite facing many adversities, and supported by her strong Christian Faith, remains brimming with hope and gratitude.   It is a sign of her fortitude and determination that she was...

Professor Sube Banerjee is that rare beast: an esteemed clinician and academic with a tremendous way with words and bucketloads of empathy. Last year he was appointed Executive Dean of Plymouth University’s cross-disciplinary Health Faculty, where along with his many other responsibilities, he jointly heads up Radio Me, a ground-breaking project that uses artificial intelligence to tailor live rad...

Jenni Dutton’s Dementia Darnings comprise a series of large works formed with running stitch that explore the effect of the condition on both her mother and herself. Jenni says the Darnings became the constant thread binding her life together and stopping it from falling apart. “How will I unpick my life from my mum’s life?”, she asks as the years pass.  The Somerset-based, multi-me...

I couldn’t have hoped for a more wonderful guest to launch my second series of Well I Know Now than the international star of stage, screen and television, Glenda Jackson. The actress has added a BAFTA to her glittering array of awards (two Oscars, two BAFTAs, one Tony, one Golden Globe, two Emmys …. ) for her portrayal of Maud in the BBC film of Elizabeth is Missing.  This intriguing wh...

For my series finale I chat to Sally Magnusson, distinguished broadcaster, journalist, author and founder of the music and dementia charity Playlist for Life.  When her mother Mamie Baird developed the condition Sally started writing about her in an attempt to hold onto the wonderful woman she loved so much. The result is a tender letter from a daughter to a mother. It is also a rep...