My mum was diagnosed with dementia 20 years ago... and still not enough has changed

Richard McCourt of Dick and Dom fame, on losing his beloved mother to the cruel condition, and why he's backing a new campaign from the Alzheimer's Society

- BY HANNA GEISSLER

Did you have children in the early Noughties? If you did, there's a good chance you remember Dick and Dom in da Bungalow.

The BBC game show, presented by twentysomethings Richard McCourt and Dominic Wood, was a riot of silliness that saw young contestants compete every Saturday and Sunday morning to be crowned King or Queen of the Bungalow. There were challenges, sketches, regular custard fights (dubbed “creamy muck muck”) and segments where Dick and Dom competed to shout the word “bogies” over one another in a quiet place such as a library.

Despite being criticised by a senior Tory MP in the House of Commons for promoting content “of a lavatorial nature”, the popular show ran from 2002 to 2006 and drew more than one million weekly viewers at its peak. What many will not have known is that, once the laughs ended and the gunge had been washed away, Richard would drive home to Sheffield to support his mum Helen, who was living with dementia after being diagnosed in her late 50s.

"That was a difficult time because obviously I was doing that every weekend," Richard, now 49, recalls. "You go from one crazy situation to a different one. You have to turn up every Saturday and still do what we did with a smile on your face, telling jokes.

Campaign

"But in the back of your mind, in a few hours' time, you're going to be at home caring for someone who has dementia."

Richard's family cared for Helen from her 2005 diagnosis until she died in 2010, aged 64. They often felt that support for those living with the condition was lacking. Two decades later, he fears little has changed and is backing the Alzheimer's Society's new campaign, It Will Take A Society, which highlights that everyone must play their part in beating dementia.