Channel 4 star 'couldn't speak' in health battle and 'thought she was having stroke'

Anna Richardson
-Credit: (Image: Reach Publishing Services Limited)


Naked Attraction's Anna Richardson has said she feared she was having a stroke while she was at King's Cross Station.

The Channel 4 presenter has opened up about dementia ahead of a documentary on which she discusses her family's experience with the disease as her father Jim suffers from vascular dementia.

The 83-year-old, once canon pastor at the prestigious Sherborne Abbey in Dorset, has spent the past decade battling the disease with Anna describing the documentary as the "hardest thing I've ever done".

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Speaking to The Times, Anna said she booked a visit to the doctor herself after the incident in King's Cross station as she feared the symptoms she was experiencing could have been the onset of dementia.

She said: "I've suddenly started to panic about forgetting words. I'm also getting migraines, which I think are menopause related. A couple of months ago, I was in King's Cross station and my head was so bad that I felt unsteady on my feet. I couldn't speak or focus, and I thought I was having a stroke. I was so freaked out that I went to a neurologist for brain scans. You think, have I got dementia?"

The 54-year-old has slammed the lack of "help, support and understanding" there is around dementia, describing it as the "the biggest health and social care crisis we're facing".

Pictured is Naked Attraction presenter Anna Richardson
Pictured is Naked Attraction presenter Anna Richardson -Credit:Channel 4

Speaking to The Times, Anna said the problem is that we see dementia as an inevitable part of getting old, rather than a condition from which many of us can protect ourselves from midlife onwards.

She said: "The bottom line is that we think it's an old people's disease, and we don't give a shit about old people in this country. It is an absolute crisis and it's getting bigger. It can affect everybody.

"I'm always thinking I should be doing more, and Dad wants me to do more. So it's guilt mixed with frustration mixed with anxiety, and that is constant."

Anna has also recently opened up about her career shifts and the personal challenges she has faced, including her health and embracing her sexuality. She has revealed her struggles with fertility, detailing how she has endured a miscarriage and an ectopic pregnancy, and was informed in her 30s she was infertile.

Speaking to Closer magazine, she shared: "It was a real shock. I came to terms with it, but then you go through the menopause and your periods stop, there's this kind of realisation that you can't have kids anyway.