Eamonn Holmes has confessed he still can’t look at his son’s wedding photos after more than three years because of the reminder of a painful shingles battle at the time.
The GB News star, 62, admitted he was “resentful” when he got shingles, which is an infection that causes a painful rash, just days before his eldest son Declan married Jenny.
He told The Standard: “I was days away of my first wedding of my children – the only wedding of my children. My eldest son was getting married and I had to be there in all the pictures. To this day I can’t look at the pictures of that day and it was three and a half years ago. I was so resentful. Where did this come from? What is this? Why am I getting it? And what timing!
“I just felt it was his day, their day, Declan and Jenny, and I felt the centre of attention was turning to me. ‘Oh, what’s wrong with you? What happened to you? Oh my goodness me.’
“I got makeup put on. I got a makeup artist. Still to no avail because I just felt rough. I looked rough. I didn’t want to be in the pictures. I was a bit subdued throughout the day. But you know, there it is.”
His wife Ruth Langsford was “so supportive” on the wedding day but he jested most of the time she is more like a nurse from a horror movie because she hates illness.
Keen to set the record straight, the cheeky presenter said with his wife he has to pass a number of tests for how ill he is.
He added: “I love how people are under this misapprehension whenever I have an ailment that Ruth is there like some Florence Nightingale. Ruth is more like Nurse Ratched from One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest.
“That’s what Ruth’s like. She tries her best, but she can’t contain her distain. She doesn’t like illness. I have to pass the test with Ruth. There are a number of tests you have to pass.
“Are you ill? Are you just groaning? Is he really ill? Shingles I can’t deny. Say I have a sore tummy, Ruth says, ‘There is nothing wrong with you, you’ve got man flu.’ But with shingles, all the evidence was there for everyone to see.”
Shingles left the Northern Irish star feeling like “the walking dead” as he took two weeks off work - fearing he looked like the Phantom of the Opera or Quasimodo.
He said: “Looking back at me is the Phantom of the Opera or Quasimodo or something. Just horrendous. Very scary. Very tender. Very blistery. Very, just horrendous. Obviously, I couldn’t shave. It was around my eyes, on my eyelid which was quite dangerous I hear.”
Once he hit 50, the journalist said a “lot of things were not the same” and at times his health struggles have been “testing” but he has remained upbeat and positive.
Most days he does physio to try and regenerate the sciatic nerve in his right leg.
“Maybe surgery is looming, the jury is out on that,” he said.
Having started a new job with GB News this year, he shared his excitement to be back in the “thick of it” reporting on hard news stories alongside his former Sky News co-star Isobel Webster.
“We’re a very happy team. Every day is a learning curve. Every day you go in and I feel privileged to do it to be able to do what I wanted to do since I was 10,” he said.
While he has found great success at GB News, the presenter said he misses the “telepathy” of working alongside his wife on TV.
He said: “I suppose a sort of telepathy that you don’t have to work at. It’s raw but it’s real. When you can read someone completely.
“I could script anything for Ruth and she could do the same for me. We know how each other think and we know how each other would ask a question or what I would ask. It’s quite telepathic.”
Shingles Awareness Week runs from February 28th-March 6th. Understanding Shingles is a campaign supported by Eammon Holmes together with GSK and the Shingles Support Society. For more information visit www.understandingshingles.co.uk
