Facing Dementia Together: Russell Grant on memories of his beloved gran

He’s set to launch a major initiative with the University of Edinburgh, hoping it will save others from the agonies he witnessed as the condition claimed his beloved gran.

Russell is putting his time and money where his mouth is, devoting a third of his time in 2016 to the cause so close to his heart.

Speaking exclusively to the Sunday Post, Russell, 65, said: “I’ve always tried to do what I could but just before New Year I knew I had to do more.”

It’s two decades now since Russell lost his nan, Alice.

Combined with the death of his other gran, it tipped Russell into a downward spiral that almost claimed his life, with ballooning weight leading to heart trouble and suicidal thoughts.

While those dark days are far behind him with Strictly helping with a major career revival, thoughts of his gran are never far away.

“My grandmother brought me in to this world,” he explains.

“My mum was exhausted after 48 hours of labour.

“My nan was a munitions worker in First World War and she painted Spitfires during the Second World War.”

But, in the late 1980s and early ’90s, the first troubling signs emerged, initially shrugged off as just getting old. Teabags would go in the kettle not the cup and clothes would be put on backwards.

Russell and his mum tried to look after her, with Russell giving up a major American network TV job in New York to be a hands-on carer.

At times it couldn’t have been more hands-on, having to shower her down after toilet accidents, before residential care was arranged.

But her shocking demise is still searingly raw in his memory.

Russell Grant with his grandmother Alice on This is Your Life

“She never swore in her life but with her brain eroding she’d have these vile outbursts. I remember my mum walked in one day and my gran asked why she kept calling her mum. My mum said ‘because I’m your daughter Joan’. My grandmother looked at her and said, ‘You’re not my daughter, I wouldn’t give birth to a horrible, fat, ugly creature like you’.”

Finally, on February 1, 1995, just six months shy of her 100th birthday, the condition that had so ravaged her claimed her life.

“I was working on TV in Cardiff and I remember getting the call at 4.27 in the afternoon to say she’d died.”

Russell has spent the past 20 years trying to raise money and awareness.

He’s lobbied governments and dug into his own pocket as well as using appearances on celebrity versions of shows like Family Fortunes and The Chase to put tens of thousands more into deserving coffers.

He has recently got involved with Dementia UK, supporting their current Time For A Cuppa push but has been a much longer-time supporter of Alzheimer’s Research UK, fronting their huge fundraising campaigns. And through them he forged the links with researchers at Edinburgh University, especially Dr Tara Spires-Jones.

“We’ve come up with a big project, hopefully to launch in April,” reveals Russell.

“We know that victims of dementia and Alzheimer’s respond to music, singing and dance.

“So we want to use the renewed fame through Strictly to do something linked to dancing for joy.”

More awareness will hopefully come through his latest book, Russell Grant’s Art of Astrology.

He turned down the offer of a lucrative autobiography, choosing instead to do the star sign-themed adult colouring book.

“Obviously the whole mindfulness thing has become so prominent,” says Russell.

“And there is a link to dementia and Alzheimer’s as if you can concentrate the mind by colouring then it could have a benefit.”

His devotion to a full-on year of helping is unquestionable, but if ever there was incentive required it came with recent news that his aunt Greta has just been diagnosed.

She’s now been taken into a home and Russell’s cousins Warwick and Trudie are now facing the prospect of going down the grim road he’s already travelled.

“There is some evidence that it is hereditary, so after what happened to my gran, yes I do worry about it.

“My mum is 88 now and I worry about her being taken with it too.

“So my work now towards finding a cure has a slightly selfish side.

“But there’s a selfless side, too. I don’t want others to go through what I’ve been through.”

Russell Grant’s Art of Astrology: Discover Your Inner Self Through Colour (Blink £9.99) is out now.