Sue Holderness is "petrified" of dementia.
The ‘Only Fools and Horses’ actress is worried about getting the syndrome – which is caused by damage to a person’s brain cells, and leads to thinking and memory issues – like her mum, and praised her pal Dame Barbara Windsor, who has dementia-causing Alzheimer’s disease, for being "so brave" to recently speak out about the issue.
She said: "I am petrified of getting dementia – I lost my mum to it in 2006.
"Barbara is at that next stage of her illness and it’s so brave of her to speak out.
"I love her and I can’t believe she has this ghastly thing affecting her."
Sue – who is famous for playing Marlene Boyce in the legendary BBC sitcom – recalls her 81-year-old pal Barbara, who she shared an agent with, as being as "sharp as a razor" while learning scripts in the past.
And the 69-year-old actress admits she does "struggle" with names now and again.
She is quoted by the Daily Mirror newspaper as saying: "I used to have a photographic memory but now I struggle."
Last week, Barbara’s husband Scott Mitchell revealed the former ‘Carry On’ star – who was diagnosed in 2014 – forgot who he was "two weeks ago".
He said: "When Barbara first got this diagnosis my big fear was always, ‘What if one day she looks at me and doesn’t know who I am?’
"And that kind of haunted me, and two weeks ago, you know, that reality came.
"It was only brief, I was just helping her, she’d got out of the bath and she looked at me and was suddenly apprehensive, her eyes went blank and she went, ‘Sorry, who are you?’ "
Sue Holderness ‘petrified’ of dementia
