When telling his wife that he had been diagnosed with terminal cancer, Jonnie Irwin apologised to her.
The A Place In The Sun presenter publicly announced his diagnosis last November, sharing that he’d been told he had just months left to live.
Jonnie shared the news with his family when he was first diagnosed back in August 2020 and chose to keep it private for as long as he could to keep his career going.
This devastating news came to his wife Jessica Holmes just two months after she gave birth to their (now two-year-old) twins Rafa and Cormac. The pair also share Rex, four.
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The TV presenter was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer, which has since spread to his brain.
Jonnie spoke to the OneChat podcast about telling his wife of the diagnosis on that ‘brutal’ day.
“I was really shaken up. I had to go home and I had to tell my wife and that's the hardest thing I've ever had to do," he recalled.
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“How do you tell a woman who only two month before has had twins?
"How do you tell them that you're not going to be there anymore?”
The dad-of-three speaks quite openly now about his diagnosis with the public, but he and Jessica tend to avoid discussing it.
He told the AIG podcast: "Financially we're slowly getting stuff in place, transferring account details and putting stuff in her name but being positive such an important factor. I do that by not talking about it too much.”
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Jessica and Jonnie are yet to tell their three boys, with the star telling Hello! Magazine: "I keep being asked, 'Are you going to tell them?' But tell them what? It would be horrible news that they'd have to get their heads around.
“And it would confuse the hell out of Rex – he's got a shocking enough day coming. Let's bury our heads in the sand for as long as possible."
Jonnie remains ‘positive’ with his sons, and has already bought them gifts for their eighteenth birthdays as he worries they won’t remember him.
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He said: “I think about that and it breaks my heart because that's what I'm destined to be, really - a footnote in their life. So I try to [leave] monuments of my love for them."
It was understandably difficult enough telling Jessica about the diagnosis
Jonnie told the OneChat podcast: "I can remember it like it was yesterday. And I've got no memory since my whole brain therapy. But that bloody memory stays in my head.
"And it is brutal. All I can remember is hugging her and just saying, 'Sorry'."
Topics: Celebrity, Health, Sex and Relationships, TV And Film
Jess Battison