Jonnie Irwin has been sharing his plan on how he hopes to provide for his three young children after he's gone in a heartbreaking interview. The TV property show host revealed last month that he has been diagnosed with terminal cancer and says he doesn't know how long he has left to live.
The father-of-three was diagnosed two years ago but kept his illness private until now. The host of Channel 4 ’s A Place In The Sun and the BBC ’s Escape To The Country, revealed his lung cancer had spread to his brain. Now the 48-year-old is speaking out in the hope it will inspire others to "make the most of every day".
On Thursday, December 15, he joined presenter Gethin Jones on BBC's Morning Live to talk about how he is planning for the future of his sons Rex, three, and two-year-old twins Rafa and Cormac.
He revealed how a sound engineer on A Place In The Sun realised his symptoms were serious when he described having blurred vision and took him straight to a hospital in Spain. After flying back to the UK and going to a hospital in the North East, he was given the tragic diagnosis.
He kept it secret for more than two years but said that he now wants to "get the monkey off my back" and share his experiences to help others. Talking about how he has planned for the future, he said: "My experience will hopefully help people with a life-threatening disease and people who are dealing with these people.
"When you get diagnosed with something so serious, all control is taken away. I wanted to take control back, so I did the usual weird diets and I also knew I had to look after my family. The moment you have family, your have this massive responsibility to look after them.
"Being freelance, I had a couple of properties. I wanted to try and get in a position to get my family into a mortgage-free situation and so I sold my buy-to-lets and then started looking around my savings. I think most people should do this every five years anyway, just to see how much you are worth. We always put it off but it is helpful.
"I went round looking in all my cookie jars. I consulted my life insurance policy holder who gave me the rules and regulations of what you can expect. To some extent, I did everything I could but I wish I had done more, certainly in terms of life insurance."
He added that most people think about life insurance, but said he didn't realise there is a gap and critical illness covers the gap.
"When you get a terminal diagnosis, it covers you for when you are gone," he said. "But a terminal diagnosis can go on for years and it will affect your work and you are waiting for this payout, who is going to pay your rent if you can't work? Critical illness covers you as soon as you are ill. I didn't take that and that put a lot of pressure on me, having to work on days when I didn't feel like it. That is the one mistake I made."
He also said he is taking each day as it comes and insisted he doesn't need "mollycoddling" after Gethin revealed that when they phoned Jonnie to ask him to appear on the show he couldn't take the call because he was out mountain biking.
"We are normal human beings," he said. "Don't not invite us because you think we won't be well enough. Treat us as you would do two years ago. We are the same as everyone else and we want the same opportunities for fun as everyone else."
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