Line of Duty star Vicky McClure yesterday appeared on This Morning to speak out about her experiences with dementia.
The actress, chatting to Holly Willoughby and Phillip Schofield, revealed that her late grandmother had the disease, and admitted that her initial diagnosis threw her family into chaos.
She explained, “When anything hits your family or your real life, you need to know everything,
“It was like, where do we go from here? It was tricky. I wanted to do as much as I could.”
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Vicky went on to share that there was one thing that appeared to help ease her grandmother’s symptoms – singing.
She revealed, ‘Towards the end of her life, my grandmother couldn’t leave the house. My mum would sing and grandmother would spark up. And you’d get a glimmer of hope.”
Vicky, who is currently best-known for her role as DS Kate Fleming in the hit BBC One show Line of Duty, in fact believes so much in the power of singing to help people with dementia, that she has set up a choir, made up of people who have the disease, in her home city of Nottingham.
A new two-part series, Dementia Choir, will document the choir and their journey.
On This Morning, Vicky revealed that it was an emotional experience for her, having had such a close connection to the disease.
The actress said, “Yes, obviously it’s extremely sad [to have dementia] in my family, but the Dementia Choir was emotional, because I could see the choir doing those incredible things.”
Dementia Choir will air tomorrow (Thursday 2nd May) on BBC One at 8pm.
During her interview, Vicky also addressed the excitement surrounding the finale episode of Line of Duty, admitting that she can’t wait until it airs so she can discuss it without fear of giving away spoilers.
She told Holly and Phil, “I’ll be able to talk about it freely [then]. I won’t have to worry about spoilers!”
