[the truth]

Rather sad story this about the cricket uber legend ian beefy botham. a man who like many other kids of my generation, was probably my biggest childhood hero.

The man has raised tens of millions for children with leukemia by walking 1000s of miles over 30 years....in addition he was of course the greatest English cricketer of all time..A game I happen to believe is the greatest game on God's earth

However having read his autobiography called "don't tell kath" it appears the great man is something of a flawed hero...in it he talks a lot about the press always trying to entrap him with women and do kiss and tells....and he is always innocent

only a few years after the book is released, beefy is caught having an affair....on piers morgan he admitted he hadn't been a great dad or husband

Now in the past few years we find beefy said he couldn't go and visit his dad who had altzheimers in his last few years and told the rest of the family to stop visiting him and to try and remember him as he was.

He said: ‘I might sound brutal, but I’m just being honest. Unless you’ve watched a loved one being ravaged by this disease, you can’t understand how horrendous it is. I didn’t want my memory of him to be distorted by the illness that robbed him of himself.’

‘There was no point going to see him because he got no comfort from it; he didn’t know who he was never mind who I was

He only realised how serious his father’s condition was on the green at Yeovil Golf Club.


‘My dad seemed fine, but as he stood over the ball, he turned to me and asked “What do I do now?” with genuine bafflement,’ he said.


‘The man taught me to play golf when I was three, but he had forgotten how to play it.’


Sir Ian added: ‘My dad would have been mortified if he had known what sort of humiliation lay ahead.


‘He would have thrown himself off a cliff rather than end up the way he did.’



I helped look after my own dad for 8 years with this dreadful condition and whilst it was heartbreaking it was also rewarding and there were many great moments too. moments of clarity where it was like the good old days. Funnily enough the longer term memory remained pretty good so we could talk about the old stories..and yes he DID recognise me and he did light up and laugh about many things we always found funny and yes he still loved cricket and he still loved his animals....without getting too maudlin , he had a small kitten on his bed 24 hours a day at the end....this little tomcat wouldn't leave the bed, I kid you not....he gave him great comfort and better company than anyone else

I couldn't have done what beefy did, but is it wrong to judge him? were all different, these traumatic things come to us all, so how do we deal with them?


One in 14 Britons over the age of 65 and one in six people over 80 years of age now suffers from some form of dementia.