Jeff Astle’s daughter tells of ‘brutal’ illness in new documentary highlighting dementia risks

That is how Dawn Astle describes watching her football legend father Jeff in the grip of dementia.

She was speaking to former England striker Alan Shearer as part of a television programme aired last night which looked at the links between football and the onset of brain disease.

Filmed in the stands at The Hawthorns, Mrs Astle described the deterioration of her father’s health after being diagnosed with dementia. The Baggies legend died aged 59 in 2002.

The BBC1 programme was called Alan Shearer: Dementia, Football and Me.

Mrs Astle said: “He was nearly 55 and my son was born and he couldn’t remember his name, and he kept saying what’s his name.

“I said it’s Matthew dad, and its not an unusual name. Then he suddenly came out one day and said is my mum still alive? And I thought, she’d been dead 15/16 years.”

She added: “It was the most devastating, brutal thing to see in my life.

“It used to kill me to go and see him. He would eat things you weren’t supposed to eat, he would go to the fridge and get a big scoop of butter and put his hand in his mouth.

“He looked like dad in the first few years, but when the disease really took a hold of him the difference in how he looked. He was 59 when he died, he looked 159.”

When asked if the player’s death was linked to heading footballs she said ‘absolutely definitely’.

Mrs Astle launched the Jeff Astle Foundation in 2014 after it was revealed that repeated trauma when he re-examined her father’s brain. It has called for more research into the impact of heading footballs.

Last night, the foundation said a growing number of families of footballers affected by dementia have expressed their willingness to donate the brains of their loved ones to assist research.