Fiona Phillips has shared devastating details about her experience living with Alzheimer’s in a new memoir.
The 64-year-old TV presenter was diagnosed with the illness in July 2023.
In Remember When: My Life with Alzheimer's, she opens up about the challenges of living with the condition.
Who is Fiona Phillips?
Fiona Philips is best known for presenting the ITV Breakfast show, GMTV Today.
Born in Kent in 1961, the presenter said she had a “wonderful childhood,” and loved studying English. She went on to do a master’s degree in journalism and broadcasting at Solent University in Southampton.
As well as her extensive TV career, Phillips is also a journalist, writing a weekly column for The Mirror and contributing to magazines such as Good Housekeeping and Women and Home.
She also campaigns for charities, serving as an ambassador for Age UK, The Alzheimer’s Society, Alzheimer’s Research UK and more.
What illness does she have?
The former GMTV host was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s in 2023, an experience she’s opened up about in her new memoir.
She said she finds discussing her life now “agonizingly difficult.”
“Sometimes I get halfway through a sentence, and I can’t remember where I was heading with it or the word I was looking for. It feels awful,” she said.
She likened her condition to “trying to chase a £5 note that’s fallen out of your purse on a gusty day.”
Alzheimer’s disease is believed to be caused by an abnormal accumulation of proteins in and around brain cells.
This coincides with a decrease in neurotransmitters (chemical messengers) that send signals between brain cells. Over time, parts of the brain shrink.
There is no known cure for Alzheimer’s but medicine can help patients manage symptoms.
What are the symptoms of Alzheimer's?
Early symptoms
- Forgetting recent conversations or events
- Misplacing things
- Forgetting names of places or objects
- Struggling to remember the right word
- Repeating questions
- Struggling to make decisions
- Becoming more hesitant to try new things
Middle-stage symptoms
- Confusion and disorientation
- Obsessive, repetitive or impulsive behaviour
- Delusions or paranoia
- Speech/language problems
- Disturbed sleep
- Mood changes
- Struggling to perform spatial tasks
- Hallucinating
Later symptoms
- Becoming aggressive, upset or restless
- Difficulty eating and swallowing
- Difficulty moving without help
- Weight loss
- Unintentional passing of urine or stools
- Loss of speech
- Severe memory problems
Phillips said that she initially wasn’t aware of her behaviour changes, but her doctor and her husband, Martin Frizell, pointed it out to her.
“He [Martin Frizell] and the doctors, who I was constantly backwards and forwards to see, would say that I kept repeating myself and that sometimes I forgot what I was doing or where I was going.”
She decided to open up to friends and family about the condition to explain any “unusual behaviour” she was exhibiting.
“The strange thing was I had no awareness of that,” she said.
Phillips lost her 74-year-old mother to Alzheimer’s in 2004. She’s expressed concerns about how she will be perceived now that she is living with the illness too.
In an interview with The Mirror, the presenter said she was "anxious" that "people would be staring or whispering about me or would just write me off as a batty old woman”.
She said: “There is still an issue with this disease that the public thinks of old people, bending over a stick, talking to themselves.
“But I’m still here, getting out and about, meeting friends for coffee, going for dinner with Martin, and walking every day,” she told The Mirror.
Who is her husband?
Fiona Phillips is married to Martin Frizell, 66, a producer and editor for numerous TV shows, including GMTV, This Morning and Loose Women
The pair met in the nineties when Phillips was working as a GMTV presenter and Frizell was its chief correspondent. After just four weeks of dating, he proposed. They tied the knot in Las Vegas in 1997.
In November 2024, Martin announced that he would be stepping down as editor of ITV’s This Morning so that he could support his wife.
“Next year I'm expecting my family priorities to change so I need to free up time for them,” he said in a statement at the time.
“I love my team at ITV and will miss them and the thrill of live telly but it's an always on, 24 hours a day, seven days a week commitment and I won't be able to do both.”
Frizell has taken on the household responsibilities, from paying bills to chores, with he said he used to “take for granted.”
Discussing the challenges of his wife’s condition, he’s said that he wishes she had “cancer instead”, according to an excerpt shared with the Daily Mail.
Since January 2025, he’s been helping her “brush her teeth and shower”, dress herself, eat and drink.
Do they have children?
The couple have two sons called Nathaniel and MacKenzie, who are in their twenties.
