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This Morning viewers have expressed their sadness for pensioner Ted, who called into the show to speak about spending Christmas apart from his wife for the first time in 68 years.
During Thursday morning’s programme, Ted spoke to Phillip Schofield, Holly Willoughby and Vanessa Feltz over the phone about how he feels being apart from his partner during the festive period.
Ted, 85, explained that his wife, Jessie, was diagnosed with dementia and is currently being taken care of in a care home.
While he was originally able to visit her, he hasn’t been able to see his spouse in person since early summer.
‘It has been really hard, especially once they locked her down,’ Ted said.
‘I was going and seeing her five days a week and then they locked her down and I haven’t seen her since the first week of June.’
Holly described Ted’s ordeal as ‘heartbreaking’, before he shared how he will be spending Christmas this year.
‘I am going to one of my son’s on Christmas, but it is hard,’ he said.
‘As I say, we’ve never been apart in 68 years, and then it’s her birthday Friday week and I can’t see her. It’s really hard, really hard.’
Several This Morning viewers shared messages of support for Ted on Twitter, with one person saying his story left them ‘bawling’.
‘Poor Ted. It’s absolutely heartbreaking,’ one person said.
‘Christmas will be very different for all of us this year Ted. How very sad,’ another wrote.
Someone else noted that there are ‘so many’ people out there ‘just like Ted’ who are having to spend the Christmas period separated from loved ones.
Sir David King, former government chief scientific adviser, recently advised that people should ‘isolate for between 10-12 days’ before seeing elderly relatives at Christmas.
Professor Susan Michie of University College London added: ‘There is a big risk if younger people have not isolated before contact with older relatives.
‘If parents know there are going to be vulnerable people around they should want children to self-isolate first.’
This Morning airs on weekdays at 10am on ITV.
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