By 19 July we had 700 ‘likes’ on the page and had hit our fundraising target of £1,000. It was an incredible feeling. The party was fast approaching and the one thing I couldn’t wait to do was show Mum a final version of the CD. Dad wasn’t able to say thank you to her, because he would never know what he was thanking her for, but this was a gift to her for all that she had done for him. On the front of the CD were the words: ‘To Linda, our rock’. When I gave Mum the CD she read the track list then turned it over. She gasped, holding back tears – ‘Oh, Simon! You stupid thing…’ – then ran to Dad to show him. ‘Look, Eddie, the CD of you singing,’ she said. ‘Oh yeah,’ he said disinterested, hardly looking at it and putting it on the table.
That day, I uploaded the ‘Quando, Quando, Quando’ video to Facebook. It was my favourite clip of us and I thought it tied in nicely with his birthday. I’d spent the day with a good friend Felipe sorting out things for the party that night. But as soon as I got home I could tell that something was wrong – I found Mum in the kitchen, crying: ‘He’s not going.’
Upstairs I could hear him throwing things around. ‘I KNOW WHERE I PUT THINGS AND SHE KEEPS ON MOVING ALL MY PISSING THINGS. I’M A PROFESSIONAL AND I CAN’T STAND THESE PISSING AMATEURS AROUND ME.’ I went upstairs but he was in a fully blown rage. My stomach turned. I’d made a huge mistake and tonight was going to be a nightmare. He was tearing everything out of the wardrobe, refusing to put any clothes on, raging about how he was a professional and he was surrounded by ‘PISSING TWATS’. He was horrible.
But then, just as quickly as he’d turned, he calmed down. I distracted him by introducing him to my friend Felipe and managed to persuade him to get into his clean clothes and brush his hair. We reminded him that it was Saturday night, which meant there was a do on at St Stephen’s, and he was invited. He slowly calmed down and got into the car. I was holding my breath all the way there, just waiting for the next outburst. We got to the venue and parked up, with me explaining what was going to happen. ‘Who is going to be here and why am I here? It’s not my party,’ he kept saying. Eventually Felipe coaxed him inside and got him to his seat; when I saw him sit down at his table I could feel tears in my eyes – it shouldn’t be this hard, but it was.
So many people got up to sing and, finally, Dad himself. A couple of times he was out of step with the music, so I got up onstage to join him. I’m not a performer, but I knew I just had to do it. So there we were, singing onstage together – something we’d never done before. I was singing away and knew all the words to the songs that used to make me cringe. I loved it – and so did he.
Dad still had no idea that it was his party, even when we brought out the birthday cake. I managed to gather everyone for a huge group photo, but in the middle of it Dad leant forward, pushing his arm right into the cake. ‘The cake!’ Mum shouted as the DJ took the photo.
All his candles were lit as we stood around singing ‘Happy Birthday’ to him. ‘Dow cry, Ted!’ someone shouted to him. ‘Cry? I dow cry!’ Dad said. ‘I’ve got seven brothers and six sisters. I don’t cry!’ I looked around and saw his sister, my Auntie Jane, with tears pouring down her face. ‘He had so much pride in his eyes at that moment,’ she told me afterwards. ‘I can’t stop crying each time I think of it.’ Dad remembered his family that night and it was amazing to see.
At the end of the night, Gill, Mum and Dad’s old next-door neighbour, came up to me in tears. ‘You’ve done an amazing thing. He would be so proud of you,’ she said, wiping her eyes. Dad’s story seemed to be touching people, and not just those in the room with us. By the next day, his videos had raised £1,500. I had an old friend, Alex, who ran The Memo – a tech-news website. That week he ran a story on his site and posted it on his Facebook. ‘This is going to be HUGE,’ it said. I didn’t think anything of it.
The rest of that week I spent most of my free time replying to the messages attached to the videos. There were so many of them and it gave me so much comfort to know that others knew what we were going through. That Friday was my last day at work before I took a couple of weeks off for a summer holiday. I was in a handover meeting when suddenly my phone began constantly buzzing.
‘Someone’s popular,’ my boss said.
‘Si’s put some videos of his dad singing online. I think they’re going viral,’ said Ellie.
‘Not really – they’re being shared a bit. We’re raising money for the Alzheimer’s Society…’
By then the donations had jumped to £10,000 and my phone didn’t stop buzzing every few moments with a new notification. It was crazy – £20, £10, £50 at a time.
A few days later I got a flight to Spain for a holiday. The videos were getting more and more views and, by this time, the Alzheimer’s Society had been in touch.
When I arrived in Spain I logged into the page and found that the views had jumped massively again. I called Mum and Dad up to check that everything was OK. Every time I’d go away from Blackburn I had this terrible sense of guilt at not being there while they were at home trying to deal with this horrible illness.
‘Simon, you need a holiday. Your dad’s fine and I can cope – just enjoy yourself. You need a break…’ Mum had said when I decided to go.
By nine o’clock the next morning I was lying in bed, feeling worse for wear after a big blow-out the night before, when my friend Brad called.
‘SIMON, you’re EVERYWHERE.’
I started getting press requests from the BBC, ITV and Sky. This thing had now taken on a life of its own. I thought it would all be over by the following week, so I wanted to take every opportunity that came along. And I was worried about people recognizing Dad in the street and confusing him – Mum would have to cope with it on her own. I decided to come back from the holiday early.
By the time I landed we had raised nearly £30,000 and I’d been contacted by the BBC. They wanted to send someone round to do an interview for that night’s show. I was unsure. Things were still very hit-and-miss with Dad. When anyone asked him a question he would give nonsensical answers, and often just go into a long monologue. I had to think about whether it was fair talking about Dad’s illness on TV. Also, I didn’t want to confuse him and make him wonder who all these people were coming round to the house. But, despite all this, I knew that had he been fully aware he would have told us to go for it.
By the afternoon a reporter on BBC North West Tonight had arrived. Dad sang a few songs and then had a quick interview, but it was clear that much of what he was saying was made up: like how he was the son of a millionaire who owned tens of factories in the Black Country!
We didn’t watch the report on the news that night because we were worried that it would just confuse Dad. The next morning it was back to reality for Mum and Dad, who had to be up early as they were taking a coach down to the Midlands for Dad’s birthday. But he was refusing to put any of his clothes on or let anyone help him. He looked like Worzel Gummidge and was in a foul mood. I dropped them off at Blackburn bus station and said my goodbyes, looking forward to having a few days to myself.
About ten minutes later, just as I was pulling into the drive, Mum telephoned me: ‘He hasn’t got his teeth in.’ I dashed around the house, trying to think where he would have hidden them, but they were nowhere to be found.
I called her back.
‘Try under the mattress.’
I searched under all the beds, but had no luck. Then I went down-stairs and pulled up the cushions on the sofa – there I found random pieces of clothing that Dad had hidden, as well as his teeth wrapped up in some tissue paper. I delivered them to the station just as Mum and Dad were getting on the coach with seconds to spare. The world might have been interested in our videos, but there were still the day-to-day challenges of living with Alzheimer’s to contend with, hand-delivering teeth and all!
That evening I went back to London as I had to return to work the following week. I bought a pizza from Sainsbury’s, watched a bit of TV and then went to bed, plugging
my phone in to charge overnight.
In the morning I woke up around 8 a.m. and, as usual, the first thing I did was to pick up my phone. I was half asleep but as soon as I saw the number of notifications from Facebook I sat bolt upright. There must have been hundreds, if not thousands, of ‘likes’ on the Facebook video as well as hundreds of donations to the JustGiving page. On top of that I had around 300 friend requests on my personal Facebook page.
‘Oh my God!’ I said out loud.
I called up Mum straight away.
‘Oh, hi! I was just going to call you. I’ve had about forty friend requests from people I don’t know…’
‘Don’t accept any of them,’ I said.
Mum didn’t understand how fast the video was going around the Internet. Neither did I really, so I went through all the analytics on the Facebook page trying to work out how it had become so big so fast and had the shock of my life. The video had been grabbed by a news site in the US, and they’d linked to our Facebook page as well as the JustGiving page. It already had 20 million views since it had been posted a day earlier.
I felt my stomach drop and held my hand towards my mouth in utter disbelief. This was much bigger than I had ever imagined.
The videos continued to be shared and at midday, while I was having lunch with Felipe, the Alzheimer’s Society Press Office called: ‘We’ve had a request in from Good Morning Britain and BBC News, wondering if you’d speak to them today or tomorrow. And can they send some cameras to speak to your dad?’ ‘Christ,’ I thought, ‘what do I do?’
My first concern was Mum and Dad and them being in Blackburn with no one helping to manage things for them. I felt like I’d massively let them down by exposing them and Dad’s illness to everyone, potentially creating more problems.
‘Can we just hold back on everything – I need to think about Mum and Dad. Dad’s ill and I need to think if I’m doing the right thing.’
I put the phone down and held my head in my hands. ‘Fuck!’ I said, panicking. Felipe sat there, laughing. I felt totally out of my depth – how was I supposed to do live TV interviews? What if I froze? What would happen to Mum and Dad in all this? How would it affect Dad? What had I done?!
‘Si, just remember why you started this in the first place,’ Felipe said. ‘You wanted people to hear your dad sing and raise money to help other people like you. Just imagine what you could do and how many people you could help.’
It was the wake-up call that I needed and I promptly called the Alzheimer’s Society back.
‘OK, I’ll do it.’
Suddenly a homeless guy stumbled right next to us, pulled out an aerosol can and started getting high on the fumes. ‘Man, you could do with some of that,’ Felipe laughed.
I was about to throw myself right into the spotlight, just like Dad had done every night when he got up onstage. I was terrified.
Chapter 19
Walking into the Good Morning Britain studio is very much like walking into a different dimension. It’s real life, but not as we know it. My heart was pounding and I was trying to stifle a full-blown anxiety attack while being wired up to a microphone and cameras were wheeled around me.
Nothing really prepares you for appearing on live national TV. I was desperate to pick up the glass of water from the table in front of me, but my hands were shaking so much I didn’t dare move. I was asked questions; I knew my mouth was opening but whether anything was coming out was another matter. From the corner of my eye I could see a clip playing of Dad and I singing in the car on repeat in the background.
‘He’s got a great voice,’ someone said.
The next minute I was standing outside on the street alone. What the hell just happened?
Nick calls. ‘Si, you looked great. You looked really relaxed!’
‘You’re joking. I thought I was about to throw up.’
I walked back home to my flat and telephoned my boss asking if I could work from home in the afternoon. But I couldn’t concentrate on anything. I was still getting hundreds of messages on my Facebook page and the JustGiving donations were pouring in. That morning we had officially reached £50,000 in donations. By the afternoon the Alzheimer’s Society called again. They had more requests from the BBC. Would I be interested in doing some radio shows in the morning from Broadcasting House? I called my boss and asked if it was OK to come in late.
‘Definitely, Simon. Go for it! This won’t happen again.’
’By 4 p.m. I had received requests from news shows across the world – Time magazine, The People’s Show and The Today Show in the US, ITV, Channel 5, RTL in Germany, CTV in Canada, and a message from Thames TV saying that there was a TV series that they’d like to chat to me about. When I called up I discovered it was from Britain’s Got Talent and they’d love to have me and Dad perform.
That was impossible. I couldn’t put Dad on live TV – his behaviour was so erratic it was impossible to predict how he would behave. Plus, I didn’t want him to be seen as a circus act: the guy with Alzheimer’s who can sing. I knew full well he could knock them out if he was having a normal day, but I just couldn’t put him in that situation. I had to put his dignity first, no matter what happened.
At 5 p.m. I received an email from The Ellen Show in the US, researching features for their next series.
I called up Nick: ‘The Ellen Show.’
‘You’re kidding me?’
‘I’ve just been on the phone to them.’
‘Fuck, Si! This is amazing!’
I did a quick Google search and saw that the video was now appearing on news sites all over the world: Poland, France, Germany, Spain, Argentina, Japan, Korea, Australia, Brazil – and not only was the video appearing everywhere but the messages to the page were pouring in.
One of the messages that stood out was from a woman in the Philippines. She was a single mother looking after her own mother who had dementia and was mostly bed-bound. She didn’t say anything particularly deep or wise, but just talked about how sometimes she felt so low about it. I thought of this woman, thousands of miles away, who went to her job every day, looked after her mother every day and felt down sometimes because of the illness. But then one day, after going to work, looking after her mother, feeding her family, she saw a video of Dad singing on Facebook, and maybe, just for a minute, she didn’t feel so alone.
That night I could hardly sleep. Before I’d gone to bed we had raised £17,000 in just one day, bringing the total to over £70,000. Amazing!
The next morning the car arrived at 6 a.m. to take me to the BBC studios. It was a beautiful clear morning and there was hardly any traffic on the roads. I was being driven down Regent Street, past Oxford Circus, and I could see the church that was just outside the BBC. This may sound ridiculous, but I had a strong sense that Dad was pushing me into all these situations. It felt as though he was in my head saying ‘Right, Sime – hold your head up. Don’t be afraid. Don’t let them see.’
We must have done around fifteen or sixteen interviews that morning for BBC Local Radio stations. It was a whirlwind.
After the interviews one of the producers came down with a lady in her early fifties, who worked in the office. We had just been introduced when she suddenly clasped my hand: ‘I just want to say thank you for everything you’re doing. You don’t know it but you’re giving so much hope to other families going through this. I just want to say thank you on behalf of them.’
I didn’t know what to say. When I think of it now it feels surreal. Was that really me she was talking to?
When I went into work for my first day back since the video had gone viral, Bernie on reception shouted: ‘I’ve seen your video with your dad. Brilliant!’ and gave me the thumbs up. As I rushed up the stairs someone else stopped me. ‘Are you Simon? We’ve all seen the video with your dad…’
As I walked to my seat, everyone started to clap.
I felt myself shrinking into my chair.
Everyone in the team was excited about what was goi
ng on. As soon as I sat down my phone started going again. It was BBC Radio 4 wanting to do an interview for You and Yours at lunchtime, followed by Sky News wanting a live broadcast.
I quietly booked a meeting room and took the BBC interview in there, then waited for the Sky News van to arrive. As they pulled up behind the office, I prepared myself for a quick interview about Dad and raising money. Instead it turned out to be a ten-minute debate about dementia care in the UK. I was completely on the spot. Then I realized that all of this was beginning to take over my life.
When I got home after work I went through some of the messages that were coming in. One stood out:
‘Hi Mac, I’m writing from Decca records – I’ll drop you an email to the Gmail address given here but wanted to be sure of the best way to be in touch. Your family’s and your father’s story is a powerful one, and perhaps we could speak about your plans through this campaign. There’s a clear possibility for a successful charity fundraising single/ album here and I wonder if we might explore that. Do drop me a line when you have a moment. Alex Van Ingen.’
FUCK! This was it, Dad’s big opportunity. I took a screengrab and sent it to Nick.
He called back straight away. ‘Si, this is amazing. Just think what you said when you started all this. You said you wanted to raise money for Alzheimer’s and get your dad a record deal. This is his chance…’
I called Alex Van Ingen immediately and explained Dad’s situation to him.
‘Oh, hello! It’s great to hear from you. How’s Ted?’
I told him everything we were going through.
‘Listen, it’s just a thought at the moment. We wanted to see if you’d be interested in doing a charity record for the Alzheimer’s Society. We’ve worked with the Military Wives before and it worked really well. We’d love to do the same for you and Ted,’ he said.
We arranged to meet the following Tuesday at The Grosvenor Hotel in Victoria.
I called Nick straight back, practically dancing around the room. If this came off it would be the icing on the cake: Dad’s first single after all these years.
The Songaminute Man Page 20