Dame Barbara Windsor’s memories are triggered and the effects of dementia eased when she watches herself in Carry On films and EastEnders, her husband has said.
The 81-year-old actress was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease in 2014, and her husband, Scott Mitchell, has recently said her condition has worsened and that he cannot leave her by herself anymore.
Mr Mitchell said that watching herself in the old comedy films and seeing a picture of herself in the BBC soap, in which she played pub landlady Peggy Mitchell, have a positive effect.
He told the Daily Mirror newspaper: “The Carry Ons were on over Christmas. She does watch them and she can get quite emotional because she says that is a past version of her…
“She still watches EastEnders every night.
“There’s still a picture of Peggy behind the bar and every time that comes into shot, I say ‘Look, look, there’s my wife’ and she always laughs and says ‘That’s nice that they’ve still got that there’, so it’s really good.”
Mr Mitchell, 55, said the memories “trigger things off” for Dame Barbara, whose diagnosis with Alzheimer’s was only made public last year, and that they are “quite clear”.
“She knows there’s a strong association with EastEnders and Carry Ons and that’s quite nice.”
Dame Barbara appeared in nine Carry On films in the 1960s and 1970s.
She began playing battleaxe Queen Victoria landlady Peggy in EastEnders in 1994 and left in 2010 but returned a number of times until her character’s death in 2016.
Mr Mitchell, who married Dame Barbara in 2000, will run the London Marathon along with a number of EastEnders stars in a team called Barbara’s Revolutionaries, to raise money for campaign the Dementia Revolution, formed by charities Alzheimer’s Society and Alzheimer’s Research UK.
He and the team, which includes soap actors Adam Woodyatt (Ian Beale) and Jake Wood (Max Branning), are hoping to raise £100,000.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article