“I did not want my memory of him to be distorted by the illness that robbed him of himself.”
Sir Ian, who has a son, two daughters and five grandchildren, made sure they stayed away. He urged his mom to do the same, but she couldn’t fairly deliver herself to turn her back on her husband, in spite of the truth the man she visited bore no resemblance to her devoted husband or wife.
“By the finish, my dad was as close to to a zombie as you can envision,” says Sir Ian. “He had no handle of his bodily functions, no concept who my mum was. Even a 6-month-outdated would have had greater comprehension of what’s going on due to the fact at least a infant understands when to consume.”
Sir Ian is speaking for the 1st time in Britain about his father’s death from Alzheimer’s condition in 2005 — he talked about it earlier this yr in an interview in Australia — to help National Dementia Week.
About 800,000 men and women suffer from dementia in Britain, in accordance to the Alzheimer’s Society. In most circumstances, it is brought on by Alzheimer’s, a progressive ailment that damages the brain. Responding to increasing concern, the Government has pledged to double funding for analysis to discover a remedy or effective treatment by 2025. Sir Ian claims he has never previously broached the subject because “it’s not the sort of issue you deliver up in a bar consuming with your mates”. But there was also an component of embarrassment not for himself but on behalf of Les.
“My dad would have been mortified if he had known what sort of humiliation lay ahead,” he says, quietly, casting his gaze out the window. “He would have thrown himself off a cliff rather than finish up the way he did.”
Sitting in a riverside hotel beside the Thames, exactly where he invested the evening with his wife, Kath, Sir Ian, 58, who lives in Ravensworth, North Yorks, has aged well. Rugged and handsome, he wears a clunky gold IWC observe on his wrist he is a brand ambassador for the Swiss marque and for Jaguar autos, which speaks volumes about the perceived top quality of the Botham brand.
“I collect a whole lot of traditional watches, much to the horror of my wife,” he says. “But these are investments that you can get pleasure from ahead of passing on to children or grandchildren.”
On the other arm is a hi-tech Jawbone action monitor that measures his bodily output and tracks his fitness. Sir Ian’s fundraising on behalf of Beefy’s Charity Foundation, which has raised about £10 million for leukaemia and lymphoma analysis, involves gruellingly long walks in excess of challenging terrain he when undertook Hannibal’s march across the Alps on foot.
He started out his charity work soon after an damage in 1977 left him attending physiotherapy every day for 6 weeks at a hospital in Taunton. To attain the division, he walked by way of a children’s ward exactly where the individuals have been dying of leukaemia and related diseases.
“These young lads would be sitting around, playing board video games, looking quite standard – no tubes or drips – but by the time my treatment was over, they had been dead. I had to do anything.”
Botham was always a guy who meant company. On the pitch, in the words of a hyperbolic commentator, he brought “fire and rapture”.
For the duration of a 15-yr Check profession of 102 matches, he took 383 wickets, scored 5,200 runs and took 120 catches.
A single of the undisputed globe-class gamers in the England side of the Eighties, Sir Ian could turn a match single-handedly.
His greatest private performances came in the course of England’s triumphant 1981 Ashes campaign towards Australia.
In the Headingley Check, he produced a match-winning 149 not out and his ferocious 118 in the 2nd innings at Old Trafford has been described as 1 of the ideal Test innings ever.
Off-pitch he was no significantly less fiery and in his youth he had a track record as a hellraiser.
He was outed some many years in the past as obtaining had a two-year affair. Sir Ian’s son, Liam, informed Piers Morgan’s Existence Stories that he had been neither a really great husband nor a particularly excellent father.
“He was most likely right,” says Sir Ian bluntly. “As a father, you’re supposed to be there for your youngsters, but due to my profession, I couldn’t be.
“As far as becoming a husband goes, we all make blunders and I would say that Kath and I are now stronger and closer than we’ve ever been.”
House plays a main position in Sir Ian’s existence he walks, he fishes, he will take element in charity events and revels in currently being a hands-on grandfather.
“I spoil my grandkids, which, as a grandparent, is only appropriate and proper,” he says with a grin. “But they also know they will have to work difficult in existence to get where they want to be.”
This summertime he will be commentating on the fortunes of England’s cricketers, a line-up he describes as “a perform in progress”.
“It’s a new coach, new gamers, a new script,” he stated. “You have to carry on younger gamers — I keep in mind myself aged 19 and feeling annoyed that I was much better than the guys playing in front of me — the cracks have been appearing.
“I feel this side will do a good deal better than England have accomplished in excess of the previous twelve months. We received slaughtered in Australia, which was humiliating. We really do not want that to come about yet again.”
Since his retirement, Sir Ian has loved fame as the encounter of Shredded Wheat, in an advertisement that also featured his grandchildren.
Searching back a generation, Sir Ian says he observed that when his father was in his mid-70s he occasionally appeared vague and forgetful, practically nothing more.
“If you asked him what he planned to do these days, he may possibly reply with, ‘I’m going over the hills and far away’,” says Sir Ian. “Mum took him to the GP but dementia wasn’t diagnosed due to the fact the early stages are difficult to determine.”
But it slowly became clear that Les was struggling from a lot more than the odd “senior moment”. The penny ultimately dropped for his son on the green at Yeovil Golf Club.
“My dad appeared fine, but as he stood more than the ball, he turned to me and asked ‘What do I do now?’ with genuine bafflement,” says Sir Ian.
“The man taught me to perform golf when I was three, but he had forgotten how to perform it.” A diagnosis quickly followed.
“My dad had been an officer in the Navy and a fine sportsman, and watching him deteriorate was appalling,” he says. “We kept him at house and brought in carers. I took him to my property in Spain, to see if the modify of air would do him excellent we had to travel by personal jet as he couldn’t have coped with an airport.”
The trip was not a achievement. Sir Ian’s swimming pool featured a tiled crocodile motif on the bottom Les was too frightened to walk across it.
On the journey residence, he lay down on the floor of the plane and refused to stand up. “We realised we would have to send him to hospital,” says Sir Ian. “He required care we couldn’t provide he would turn into violent and have to be restrained to have a shower. Later on, he needed to be sedated.”
One of Sir Ian’s last recollections of his father, then aged 82, was of him “shuffling about the ward, holding the hand of any person who occurred to be passing”.
“There’s a saying that you come into the planet as a kid and you depart as 1, and that was correct for my father,” says Sir Ian. “There was no point going to see him because he got no comfort from it he didn’t know who he was never ever mind who I was.”
Sir Ian believes his mother’s death, in 2012 was hastened by the agonising ordeal of viewing her husband die.
“Dementia brings about the organs to shut down, and in an infirm, elderly particular person, that can occur fairly rapidly. But my father was so physically fit that it took a lengthy time for his physique to fail,” he says.
“My mum aged many years, she would cry following every single check out, emotionally exhausted. Afterwards she stated she wished she had taken my suggestions and stored away. That is the terrible factor about dementia you observe somebody die twice in excess of.”
Ian Botham interview: I could not pay a visit to my father when he was dying from dementia
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