Originally published June 23 2005
Radio soap star reenacts life with Alzheimer's afflicted husband on program
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
The Telegraph reports that June Spencer, longtime star of radio soap opera "The Archers" -- which plays on Britain's Radio 4 -- lived with her husband's Alzheimer's disease for four years before he passed away, and will now relive that to a degree as her character's husband slowly succumbs to dementia.
It has been a gruelling role to play for the 86-year-old - better known as Peggy Wooley from Radio 4's long-running soap - since programme editors announced that they were introducing an Alzheimer's storyline and that the victim would be her radio "husband" Jack, played by Arnold Peters.
It is four years since June's husband Roger died of a stroke, having suffered for many years from dementia.
When the programme's editor, Vanessa Whitburn, and her team of scriptwriters decided Alzheimer's should visit Ambridge, they knew that for June, fiction would be mixed with reality.
Handling the subject would have to be done sensitively, Whitburn realised, so she invited Spencer to a script conference to describe her experiences of the loneliness of caring for a man who was slowly losing his mind.
She told the enthralled scriptwriters of the anxiety she suffered in the months leading up to his death, especially when she had to leave him at their Surrey home to travel to Birmingham to record The Archers.
Jack Wooley has been diagnosed with dementia - although the word Alzheimer's has not been uttered.
If June Spencer has been challenged by the plot, then so too has Arnold Peters in portraying Jack.
Spencer admits to having felt emotional when she listened back to the episode in which Jack and Peggy go to see a specialist.
One reason that Spencer agreed to subject herself to a long-running storyline that would inevitably dig up sad memories is that she is passionate about the need for more Alzheimer's research.
The recording of episodes featuring Jack's diagnosis coincided with news of the proposal by the National Institute of Clinical Excellence (Nice) to withdraw the only three drugs that treat Alzheimer's - Aricept, Exelon and Reminyl - on the strongly disputed grounds of lack of cost effectiveness.
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