At the time, it was just a pleasant stroll across what is

arguably Bristol's most famous landmark.

Now, as preparations get under way for Memory Walk 2008,

Tony Robinson's recollections of leisurely saunters across

Clifton Suspension Bridge with his elderly parents have taken

on a new significance.

“They were both quite well then. They admired and loved the

bridge, and when they came from their home in London to see me

in Bristol we'd spend time around it,” he recalls.

“We couldn't have envisaged what was going to happen. Then

again, nobody ever does.”

First Tony's father, Leslie, became ill with Alzheimer's,

and was treated at a psychiatric ward before a drug combination

was found that enabled him to return home and die peacefully in

his own bed.

Then his mother, Phyllis, suffered a varicose vein operation

that went wrong and had to be admitted to a care home with

dementia.

These memories have led to Tony becoming an ambassador for

the Alzheimer's Society.

It is a very different role to those that have made him a

familiar face on television screens.

As we talk, there is none of the cheery enthusiasm that Tony

displays when presenting the Channel 4 archaeology series

Time Team, and certainly none of the buffoonery of his

character Baldrick in the BBC comedy Blackadder.

Instead, there is an unexpected intensity – and something

else that at first is difficult to define.

As our interview progresses, however, it becomes clear that

it is anger – both at the situation many elderly people with

mental health problems find themselves in, and at the failure

of the Government to provide adequate help to them and to their

relatives.

“Because my dad had dementia, and then my mum, it became a

central theme to my life for about 10 years,” says Tony, who

now divides his time between Bristol and London.

“I was absorbing all those experiences and constantly asking

myself questions. I'm a reasonably articulate, white,

middle-class bloke, the sort of person who by most definitions

can deal with the system. Yet I found the system was failing me

just as much as it was failing everybody else.”

Even so, surely it was brave of him to become an ambassador

for the Alzheimer's Society, given that many people try to

block out painful memories of a loved one being destroyed by

the illness?

Tony promptly retorts: “It wasn't really bravery. I was just

massively fed up. It had gradually occurred to me that there's

an attitude in this country which means our elderly infirm are

at best suffering from institutional ignorance and at worse

cruelty.

“The attitude towards them seems to be: 'Oh, there's nothing

you can do about that, it's just a fact of life'. But it isn't

– you can look at a host of other societies and find that they

deal with it in a far more humane way than we do – it's just

something that we've chosen to turn our backs on.”

Tony certainly doesn't mince his words. The conversation

moves on to why society is so reluctant to address the problems

of dementia, and I remark perhaps it is because many people

fear age and madness.

“And incontinence, of course,” Tony interjects.

He continues: “Youth culture may be part of it, but there's

a youth culture in most countries so I don't think that really

explains the way in which people try to close their eyes to the

problems of old age.

“Ever since I was a child, I've heard adults saying about

their elderly relatives 'Don't ever let that happen to me. Pass

me the pills if I ever get to that state'. It's an absurd thing

to say – are they really saying that they're prepared to allow

one of their relatives to go to prison for assisting their

death? It's an extraordinary kind of blindness.”

What did Tony find most upsetting about the time when his

parents were in institutional care? He does not cite any

specific incidents, but instead recalls the mundanity of

institutional life that he recalls with mounting fury.

“Like most people who visit a care home, I found the

staggering level of institutional boredom that goes on

profoundly disturbing.

“When people talk about elderly abuse they tend to mean

theft, physical and sexual assault, those kinds of things. But

to me there's a low-level elderly abuse that an awful lot of

infirm, elderly people have to endure which is as shocking as

the theft and the brutality.

“One of the reasons I find it so cruel is that when you

first go into one of those over-heated, bland sitting rooms

with the television blaring and just one carer in the room

reading a newspaper, you just assume that all the people in it

are barking mad or stupid.

“But, actually, most of them are simply infirm. Behind those

eyes, behind the shaking, behind the paralysis, behind the

staring at the wallpaper there are lively minds that could be

brought to life with the right strategies, such as simply

engaging them and talking to them.

“There have been studies which show some people in

institutional care are spoken to for about two minutes in the

course of most days. Is it any wonder they go doolally?”

However, Tony's greatest wrath is directed towards the way

successive governments have failed to address the problem of a

growing infirm elderly population, and have also failed to give

sufficient support to their relatives.

“A lot of people are cared for by relatives, and there you

have another tragedy, which is that carers have to sacrifice

their lives in order to look after the infirm elderly. By doing

so they take an awful lot of weight off the Exchequer, yet at

the same time we will quite happily allow those carers to fall

into penury. The carers' allowance is one of the great national

scandals.

“Certainly it's true that the financial arrangements created

by successive governments only add to the amount of worry and

suffering that a lot of people undergo. The notion that the

Second World War generation should have to pay for care after

they got an unexpected windfall because the value of their

house went up is nothing more than a deliberate plunder on the

part of successive governments in order to make life at the

Exchequer easier.”

It is now some 15 years since Tony's father Leslie died, and

three years since his mother Phyllis passed away.

Looking back on the time when his parents were so ill, Tony

observes: “Alzheimer's is no respecter of a person's position

in society. I think really, if there's anything interesting

about the situation I was in, it was that it was so similar to

that of anyone with a relative who has Alzheimer's.

“You have to hold down a job, you have to keep earning, you

have your kids to look after, and often it involves a great

deal of travel.

“Money doesn't make a huge amount of difference. It doesn't

guarantee you're going to find a good care home or that the

illness is going to be any easier and that the pressures you

face will be any less.”

For more information and to join the Alzheimer's Society

Bristol Memory Walk on Sunday, September 21, go to

www.memorywalk.org.uk.