Phyllida Law: my mother’s dementia had its funny side

By Elizabeth Grice

8:00AM GMT 23 Feb 2013

A life on the stage, and marriage to the writer of ‘The Magic Roundabout’, equipped Phyllida Law with a sense of humour. In a new book she takes a comic, yet moving, look at her mother’s dementia.

So much merriment courses through Phyllida Law’s account of looking after her demented mother, Meg, that some busybody from the mental health police is bound to object that she isn’t taking the subject seriously enough.

Many of their exchanges belong in an Alan Bennett play. “You haven’t got your distance glasses on, Mother,” shouts the actress as Mego, as she was known, a little unsteady and suffering from glaucoma, totters off for her morning walk, waving her stick. “Don’t worry, dear,” comes the reply. “I’m not going any distance.”

Then there is the curious incident of the toast in the night-time. Mego woke in the early hours, yodelling: “Yoo-hoo. Anyone home? What’s for breakfast?” “I slithered downstairs to tell her it was 3am,” Phyllida recalls. “She seemed to be fiddling with her radio, so I asked if she’d like it on. She said, no, she was just trying to make herself a piece of toast. Something made me lock the front door as I went back to bed.”