Our Dementia Choir With Vicky McClure
Thursday, BBC1
When I Grow Up
Thursday, Channel 4
Rating: 
Our Dementia Choir featured Vicky McClure, who may be ‘Haitch’, if I’m not ‘Haitch’ – anyone could be Line Of Duty’s ‘Haitch’; are you ‘Haitch?* – forming a choir as a means of enhancing the lives of dementia sufferers.
It was powerful, emotional, moving and did make you wonder whether there was anything that couldn’t be made better by throwing a choir at it. I would ask Gareth Malone but in my mind’s eye I can see him curled up in a seething ball, hissing: ‘I thought I had this all sewn up.’
So maybe he’s best left alone.
Vicky McClure (pictured here with members of the Dementia Choir) does have skin in the game, so to speak, given that her grandmother Iris was in the grip of dementia before she died
McClure does have skin in the game, so to speak, given that her grandmother Iris was in the grip of dementia before she died. ‘My nanna was very bold with a cracking sense of humour and a dirty laugh,’ she said, ‘but the dementia stripped all that, leaving just a shell.’
She assembled a 20-strong choir ranging in age from 87 to 31. There was Julie and Betty and Mick and Chris and Daniel and Rae. Dementia is an umbrella term, we learned, for any disease that leads to progressive loss of brain cells and affects everyone in different ways, depending on which cells are lost, and when.
(I confess, I did not know this.)
Julie, 50, had short-term memory loss and couldn’t remember whether she had showered or not so sometimes took a shower after taking a shower. Betty, 82, said ‘I forget I have dementia.’
Chris, 67, had become disinhibited. ‘We like a bit of action in the bedroom,’ he told McClure. ‘He is not the man I married,’ said his wife Jane. ‘I just find it so, so sad… It’s like a long goodbye. Every week we are losing something of him.’
The scientific bits showed how music excites and stimulates the brain in ways that other auditory information does not. Some couldn’t remember what they had for breakfast but could remember song lyrics from years ago.
Rae, a former music teacher who hadn’t been near a piano in more than a decade, suddenly sat down and performed Für Elise perfectly. Where did that come from? ‘I don’t know,’ she said.
‘I thought I wouldn’t remember how to play. It’s like a glorious reawakening.’ But just as important was the formation of strong social bonds between families who had otherwise, it seemed, hidden themselves away.
Daniel, 31, has an extremely rare form of Alzheimer’s, having inherited a faulty gene from his father, who died at 36. He now has problems with memory, speech and basic motor skills and is the father of two-year-old twins.
He is about to marry the twins’ mother, Jordan, who was the most loving woman you could ever hope to meet and somehow copes with the incredible strain. (The chances of either twin having the disease is 50:50.)
McClure visited them at home, and even though she didn’t want to cry – ‘This isn’t about me’ – she did. ‘Two young people… it is so bloody cruel.’
The choir performed Stand By Me at a pre-wedding party for Daniel and Jordan, and it was the coming together that was important, and seeing the people rather than the disease that was important.
Daniel cried and Jordan cried and Vicky cried and I cried, and if you did not cry, what are you made of? Stone? It was good to see dementia being brought out into the open and there’s a second episode this week, after which, I don’t know.
Will the choir be disbanded? I hope not as then, surely, it’ll be just another thing for them to lose.
When I Grow Up is billed as ‘a social experiment’ but is really just an excuse to wheel out adorably cute kids in the absence of any other adorably cute kids being wheeled out on Channel 4 at the moment.
The deal, just about, is that kids from different backgrounds will get to try out careers they may never have considered. This week it was journalism, which saw seven-year-olds placed at Hello! magazine.
Ha! You call that journalism, I was minded to sneer, but then remembered all I do is watch telly, so fair play. The star of the show was definitely Isabella, who announced that she had made her own newspaper last year, Isabella’s News, and talked us through it.
‘It’s got alcohol facts and what cancer can give you and child abuse,’ she said. ‘Fascinating,’ said Rosie Nixon, the magazine’s editor-in-chief, who was plainly terrified.
The team were variously dispatched to interview Myleene Klass, trail Charles and Camilla and host a VIP performance of The Lion King. My favourite moment was when Isabella met Myleene’s press person and said: ‘I’m not a big fan of Myleene. I’ve never heard of her.’
Meanwhile Charlie, who was over-confident, did seem to learn that teamwork doesn’t mean telling a team what to do, while Ryley, the least confident, did learn that his voice could be heard. But mostly they were just adorably cute. Job done.
*The fella who just delivered my groceries. Is he ‘Haitch’?