Bill Turnbull bravely showed he won’t let his prostate cancer diagnosis beat him by visiting a care home where elderly residents get a new lease of life having fun with toddlers.
The much-loved former BBC Breakfast and Strictly star, 62, made the poignant visit to Nightingale House in south London to kick off the new series of BBC1’s Holding Back The Years on Monday.
He moved viewers to tears by chatting with some of the 200 residents, who have an average age of 90, about how they feel “like being a child again” by playing games and singing daily with kids from the nearby Apples and Honey Nightingale nursery.
#HoldingBackTheYears! Informative, interesting programme that caused me to have something in my eye a couple of times ! Thank you @billtu – thinking of you – and @realmissfiona
— Helen Haines (@ladygwagwa) March 12, 2018
It is the first inter-generational care scheme in the UK and experts hope up to 500 others will be up and running within the next five years.
Turnbull, whose illness has spread from his prostate to his legs, hips, pelvis and ribs, even took time to entertain the pensioners and children by reading from his light-hearted book The Bad Beekeepers Club, about his hobby of looking after beehives, during their afternoon storytime.
Read more: Bill Turnbull opens up about cancer diagnosis
He said: “This could all be seen as a bit of a game-changer for care homes which, up until now, have been seen as the last step on the journey of life.
“What’s happening here is giving the children a valuable experience and giving the older people a whole new purpose.”
Resident Fay Garcia, 90, told him: “It’s like being a child again.
“It’s better than all the medicines, all the pills and certainly better than putting on the TV or reading the papers and all the miserable news. This is wonderful.”
Stephen Burke, of United For All Ages, said: “The UK is one of the most age-segregated countries in the world.
“Most of our activities only cater for one age group, like a care home or a nursery, and very rarely do they mix.
“There are all sorts of impacts as a result of this.
“Loneliness and isolation for a lot of people, but also children don’t benefit from the learning and experience that older people can provide.
“We’re hoping that within the next five years there will be some 500 care-home nurseries on the same site.
“We have a lot of interest already from several hundred care schemes and housing schemes.”
The programme also featured Chris Hickey whose wife Sue saved his life when his heart stopped beating for an incredible 68 minutes after he suffered a cardiac arrest at their Cheltenham home.
Fighting back tears, Sue said: “I knew he was dying.
“I witnessed my father’s death and he was making that death-rattly sound.
“I literally stood there and had a moment of sheer panic.”
By an amazing coincidence, she had read a medical article that morning advising people not to seek help from outside the home in such an emergency but to dial 999 immediately, and the operator gave her clear instructions on what to do.
Her actions in those crucial first five minutes meant paramedics could eventually revive her husband when they arrived.
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Holding Back The Years is on BBC1, weekdays at 9.15am.