John Partridge appeared on Good Morning Britain today to discuss the rising cost of care for the elderly and revealed his mum has sadly passed away.
Bridget died three weeks ago, having been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease in 2010, and spent her final years in a care home.
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The former EastEnders star was very honest when he went into the Celebrity Big Brother house in January 2016 that he was using his fee from his stint on the show to pay for his mum’s rising care costs, which amounted to £45,000 a year by the time she died.
Appearing on GMB, the 45-year-old star revealed his anger at how expensive it was to look after his ailing mother in her final years.
“How do you pay those care costs?” He asked hosts Susanna Reid and Ben Shephard. “In my mother’s case it was £45,000 a year.”
As Susanna asked whether the financial burdens has also been great when John was looking after his mum himself at home, he replied:
“Yep, we had private nurses, there were still costs involved medically to deal with her condition, we had to find her a placement. The only place we could find that we felt was fitting for her at this time in her life cost that money.”
Angry that the care system had cost his mother her whole life savings, he added:
“My mum worked so hard every day of her life and what she had was to leave, not to us necessarily, but to her grandchildren, my mum passed away three weeks ago with zero in her bank account. Zero.”
A report has recently found that private care home residents cost 44 percent more than state-funded residents, and John has insisted something must be done about the injustice.
“You lose everything,” he said. “Give your children your money now so they can have something later otherwise they’ll be left with nothing.
“I wish she hadn’t saved and saved, she saved for the wrong things, she did not save for that, she saved for her family and she’d be heartbroken if she realised that this is what had happened.”
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John revealed in 2014 that he’d lost four stone since leaving EastEnders in 2012 due to the stress of his mother having the disease.
He has returned to EastEnders on and off over the years, but said his mother’s condition was the reason he was unable to make a permanent comeback.
John played Jane Beale’s brother, Christian Clarke, from 2008 to 2012. He left to start a new life with his partner Syed Masood after a dramatic relationship during their time on the Square.