TV presenter Baz Ashmawy said his heart will break if he can’t hug his mother for Christmas.
The 50 Ways to Kill Your Mammy star said visiting Nancy from afar while maintaining social distancing during the first lockdown was torture.
And now he fears they won’t be able to see one another at all as stricter restrictions loom to curb the virus.
He told the Irish Sunday Mirror: “I didn’t really get to see her the first time round and it was very hard.
“What we did was I’d go up and sit on the wall and she’d stay in the porch and chat like that.
“I’m very tactile person, I usually have my mother in some sort of headlock…
“If I had to go back to not being able to see my mam I think my heart would break. I can’t imagine not being able to hug her for Christmas.”
Baz is back on our screens with a new series of DIY SOS as he and an army of volunteers transform families’ homes and their lives.
He said: “You wouldn’t ask a human being to work they way they do, 18 hour days for nine days straight. They just graft. I’m as moved by the volunteers as I am by the families.
“There’s never a dry eye when they hand over the house.
“It’s nine days of their life but it’s forever for the families.”
Wingman presenter Baz gets close to all the families but Amy Mulcahy, 14, left a lasting impression.
The Limerick girl was left seriously injured in a boating accident after her hair got caught and she was stuck underwater for several minutes.
Baz said: “Medics said she was ‘non compatible with life’. She was brain damaged, couldn’t see, couldn’t talk, couldn’t walk.
“After a while she got her sight back and could speak a little bit, but she’s in a wheelchair, she can’t walk.
“She’s in a little bedroom all day long, it’s like a prison, it would rip your heart out.
“But there’s a normal teenage girl there. She’s very clever, she’s great craic. Her excitement and drive and reaction when she saw her new home – it had such a positive effect on her, she’s now off all medication and doing her physio. When I got home after every shoot I just grabbed my kids – it gives you real perspective.
“I’ve one daughter who has epilepsy, I remember I was moaning that week about the car, then she had a seizure. I said what was I moaning about a day ago?”
Baz admits Covid-19 has changed everything but he says some of it is for the better as materialism takes a back seat and family takes centre stage.
He said his new podcast – The Good, the Baz and the Ugly – is perfect for
lockdown as he tackles subjects from Scientology to cryptocurrency.
He said: “It’s like a dummy’s guide to everything I’m interested in.
“I found the Scientologists very open, contradictory to the research I’d done and documentaries I’ve watched.
“It was very interesting – but I don’t think I’ll be signing up as a Scientologist any time soon.”
- DIY SOS is on RTE One today at 6.30pm.
