Gabby Logan has told how she was haunted for years by a chilling fear her son would die as a teenager.
The BBC favourite – set to host the Qatar World Cup with Gary Lineker – was convinced Reuben would never reach 16 because her brother Daniel, a budding footballer, had collapsed and died at 15.
Gabby, 49, also revealed her anxiety led to her obsessing over young footballers’ dates of birth when she started her TV work – to find out if their age matched Daniel’s.
The presenter, mum to twins Reuben and Lois, now 17, broke down as she spilled out her anguish in a podcast.
She told how Daniel, four years younger than her, collapsed and died playing football in the garden with his dad, former 70s Leeds United star Terry Yorath in 1992.
Daniel, who was found to have heart disease, had just signed as a youth player with his father’s old club.
“When my son was nearly 16 – a few days from Daniel’s birthday – I realised that I’d been worried about him not being 16 because Daniel never got there,” she told podcast host Steven Bartlett.
“So I did have a fear I was going to repeat history.”
“Even a few years afterwards I could find myself sobbing. When I started working in football I used to be obsessed with dates of players’ births because they would be Daniel’s age.
“And I knew he might be playing in that match. You wonder, ‘What kind of player would he have been?’. I wonder if he’d have had a girlfriend by now, or met somebody he wanted to marry, or now I wonder if he’d have children.”
It took a therapist to help her to stop going through life fearing a tragedy was imminent.
Gabby said: “There was a part of me that thought ‘now terrible things can happen at any time’.
“And I was almost waiting for that next thing. Then I had this therapist a few years later and she just looked at me and said ‘Your s*** thing’s happened’.
“That was such a powerful thing to say because although another s*** thing can happen of course, it stopped me. It kind of really stopped me in my tracks and I thought ‘I’ve got to stop believing something else is coming down the tracks
that I’m going to have to deal with’.
“It wasn’t me thinking ‘I’m not going to cross the road because a car’s going to come’. It wasn’t about taking risks, it was just a self-defence mechanism getting ready for it.” Gabby said her grief over losing Daniel led her into a string of bad relationships that she accepted because she didn’t want to commit to someone.
“At the time I was single and I was definitely not attracting the right people into my life,” she told the The Diary of a CEO podcast. “And I was not going out with people who were enhancing me as a person.
“Because why would I want to have any long-term commitment with anybody who’d treat me well or be nice
to me because I wasn’t going to commit to something, so I may as well be with somebody who wasn’t that nice to me, who didn’t make me feel good about myself.”
She said there was no formula for handling grief, but added: “I think counselling and talking to people is really helpful.”
