Nicky Campbell is to open up about having bipolar disorder and suffering an “emotional breakdown”.
The brave Radio 5Live host and presenter of ITV’s Long Lost Family has written a memoir in which he talks about the condition’s “late diagnosis”.
He told the Mirror: “So many people have been brave enough to tell their stories on Long Lost Family.
“I think it’s my turn.”
The star, who hosts Long Lost Family with Davina McCall, has signed a deal with publisher Hodder & Stoughton for the memoir, out in February next year.
According to the Bookseller, it will “focus on family, adoption, mental health” and Nicky’s “miracle dog,” the labrador Maxwell.
Publisher Rowena Webb said: “Nicky’s courage and honesty in writing his story makes this a very special book. And it wouldn’t have happened without a very special dog called Maxwell. It’s a book for life. And I can’t wait for others to read it too.”
In One Of The Family, Nicky also opens up about how being adopted made him feel like an “outsider”.
Nicky, 59, was adopted by Sheila and Frank Campbell in April 1961, when he was just a few days old.
Ex-social worker Sheila, who died last year, worked as a vital radar operator with the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force during the Second World War.
She guided RAF planes to their targets on D-Day from a base at Beachy Head, East Sussex and received a medal of service for her work in 2017.
Nicky’s biological mother Stella Lackey was unmarried and had travelled from Ireland to give birth to him.
Although she sent Christmas cards for the first five years of Nicky’s life, they had no direct contact with each other. When he was in his 20s, Nicky tracked down Stella, and his biological father Joseph.
In the memoir, Nicky talks about how guilty he felt towards his parents when he decided to find them – and the disappointment he felt when he finally met his birth mother in person.
He said previously: “It was a surreal moment for me. I met my birth mother in Dublin in 1990 and, for the first time, I saw a face that looked like mine.
“But I felt no emotional connection with her, no spiritual connection even.
“There was nothing. If anything, I felt quite sorry for her.
“She’d had two children within 18 months, by two different men; she led a complicated, rather tragic life.
“But I’m so thankful to have met her and felt honoured to help carry her coffin when she died in 2008.”
His adoptive father Frank died in 1996.
Nicky will also talk about how his labrador Maxwell helped him turn his life around and understand his past.
He said: “The beauty and simplicity of Maxwell’s world has helped me reconnect to my childhood and to Candy, the first dog I loved so deeply.
“Through this, I was able to understand my adoption and identity with greater clarity and to appreciate the true meaning of family.”
In 2004 Nicky published a book about his hunt for his birth mother, titled Blue-Eyed Son, with Pan Macmillan.
