Tony Christie: Legendary Yorkshire native still going strong 12 months on from dementia diagnosis

It’s just 12 months since Tony Christie announced on daytime television that he had dementia. A debilitating disease for anyone, but for someone as active as he was at 79 it was shocking news. But the singer is now 80 and remains as busy as ever. Taking life easy? Not a bit of it.

His diary is packed with concerts across the UK and Germany and he is more than happy to carry on singing.

“I’m not giving up,” he said. “They’ll have to shoot me first.”

He admits his diagnosis was a shock but he is on strong tablets.

“The drugs are keeping it at bay,” he said. “It won’t cure it but I’m able to carry on living my life. I drive, I do concerts, I do everything I ever did and I’m happy with that.”

He’s building up to a show in Scunthorpe later this month, just a few miles from where he grew up in Conisbrough near Doncaster and he is happy to be on home turf.

He has few family in the area these days – “just my brother who still lives in Conisbrough” – but he still loves to pop back from his home in Lichfield, Staffordshire.

As a young man he worked in Rotherham in the wages department of a steel works before he found stardom. He lived in a flat in Hillsborough not far from Sheffield Wednesday’s ground.

His wife Susan was a secretary at the Baileys nightclub group and was sent along by her boss on a scouting mission to see Christie perform.

“I was on stage and I looked down and saw her sat in the front row,” he said. “I said that’s the girl I’m going to marry and I did. She didn’t want to know at first, she thought I was a big-headed pop star.”

They lived in Spain for a while but are settled in Stafforshire, in the middle of the country.

“Where ever I am I like to get home at night,” he said. “So if I’m in London or the south coast, or up north, I can always get home to Lichfield. It’s important to me. I like to be grounded.”

Many stars of the 1970s fade but Christie keeps bouncing back. He was given an unexpected lift when Peter Kay covered his 1972 song (Is this the way to) Amarillo. And in 2008 he recorded the Made in Sheffield album with producer Richard Hawley.

So much for putting his feet up. He has 31 dates in his diary this year already. Scunthorpe (Plowright Theatre) is on February 22 and in September and October he has dates in Wakefield and Leeds.

In between he has a mini-tour of Germany where he is especially popular.

“I’ve always been big in Germany, even before I’d made it here,” he said. “I’m not sure why but they really took to me and I love going over there.”

He is looking forward to travelling this year, despite his health issues.

He says he was diagnosed with early onset dementia after forgetting people’s names. He also began to struggle with his favourite hobby of solving cryptic crosswords.

Now he uses an autocue to remind him of the words to his songs but he says this is not linked to his illness.

“I have had an autocue for 20-odd years,” he said. “Lots of singers do it. You can’t remember every word to every song.”

Following his diagnosis, Christie became an ambassador for the Music for Dementia charity and recorded record Andrew Gold’s Thank You For Being A Friend on its behalf.

“My doctor told me music is one of the best therapies for anyone with dementia,” he said.

He said: “It’s to raise awareness and it’s also to thank the carers…

“Basically, the song is for the carers to say thank you for being a friend to the dementia sufferers.”

Christie said he gets stopped by people on the street who tell him his story has helped them come to terms with their own or a loved one’s dementia diagnosis.

He said: “When I went on television, I think it was Steph’s Packed Lunch, backstage, before we did the show, I mentioned it to her and told her, ‘I’ve got the beginnings of it’, and she said, ‘Oh. Do you mind if we talk about it on screen?’ I said, ‘No’.

“So instead of talking about other things, we did a whole section about it and from that a lot of people have stopped me in the streets or supermarkets and have said, ‘Thank you for what you did’.

“We know a lot of people are now not ashamed of it, that they’re actually talking about it. So it’s… in a way taken away the shame of it, which is the main thing.”

Christie said, when he was first diagnosed with dementia, the doctor told him he was “very lucky” because he was in the “right business” to help him fight the disease as “singing music and playing music is one of the things that slows it down”.

He continued: “The big message is to keep playing the music, keep singing, just keep the music going. Music is the greatest thing in the world. I make my living from it, I’m very lucky that it’s helping me no end.

“It helps everybody if they can play records, in ears, play at home, keep listening to music, it’s part of the cure.

“Music has been my life. I’ve been singing since I was a little boy. My dad used to play piano in the lounge. When my grandparents came over, they were Irish and they were in ceilidh bands.

“My grandfather was a squeezebox player, I’ve got it in my house now and my grandmother was a fiddler, violinist, very well known.

“So when they came over to my parents’ house, my dad would sit at the piano, put me on a stool and I used to sing, and my grandparents used to give me six pence. That’s when I decided, I think I was be about five or six years old, I can make a living doing this.”

He added: “I’ve known so many people, family as well, who have it. I’ve never felt ashamed, I’ve never felt ashamed of them. A lot of people did and that’s very sad that they tried to hide it.

“Since I came out, which I did by accident on Steph’s Packed Lunch – she brought it out of me – and ever since then I’ve been stopped in the streets and in the shops by people saying thank you for what you did, this helped our family, there’s no shame any more for having it. So I’m really proud of that.

“My advice is do not be ashamed of it. There’s nothing to be ashamed of. It’s a thing that happens to a lot of people. I’m not ashamed of it.”

Visit: www.tonychristie.com.