Mike Tindall’s parents haven’t “left the house” in over a year.
The former rugby player – who has children Mia, seven, Lena, two, and five-week-old Lucas, with wife Zara – has opened up about the struggles his mother Linda and his father Philip have faced amid the coronavirus pandemic because of his dad’s battle with Parkinson’s disease.
Speaking to the Duchess of Gloucester to mark World Parkinson’s Month, Mike – who is patron of Cure Parkinson’s – said: “What they’ve really missed out of this year is my mum’s missed companionship really of being able to go and see someone else because she doesn’t feel now that she’s comfortable leaving my dad alone.”
The ex-sportsman told of how Philip’s condition has deteriorated over the last 10 years, particularly after enduring spinal surgery and colitis.
He said: “It’s our ten-year wedding anniversary and it was that year that… through his Parkinson’s, his spine in his back is obviously curved, and then it caused problems with his discs and then he had to have a wheelchair at the wedding. He could walk some bits of it.
“When you start adding [the other conditions]up they’ve made a massive change over the last 10 years whereas before that, you know, it was a lot slower process.
“Then you throw in lockdown and literally they’re both on the vulnerable list so they have not literally left the house in a year.”
And Mike admitted he has urged his mum to get some help in caring for her husband, but she “refuses to give her man up”.
The duchess, who is patron of Parkinson’s UK, said: “It is very tough, and it affects the whole family not least your mother, who is the prime carer… for your dad.”
Mike replied: “Yeah, we keep telling her that she doesn’t need to be that, but she’s a very stoic, northern lady, who refuses to give her man up. And we’re trying to convince her that you’re not giving up your man, you’re just allowing the frustrating parts of it that, you know, get you sort of riled up, that someone else deals with and it also gives you a life.”
The video call between the pair was recorded on April 7 but its release was postponed following the death of the Duke of Edinburgh two days later.