John McCririck’s wife reveals ‘his life fell apart’ after Channel 4 sacked him
RACING pundit John McCririck died yesterday after a secret battle with lung cancer, his wife Jenny has revealed.
And she claims the decline in his health was sparked by his sacking from Channel 4 Racing after 24 years in 2013.
John’s death, aged 79, came nine months after he said on ITV’s This Morning that he “didn’t expect to be alive this time next year”.
In that interview he blamed his frail appearance on a bout of flu.
Doctors then found a cancerous tumour while he was being treated for sepsis in January 2018. But he kept both illnesses secret to avoid attention from wellwishers.
Speaking to The Sun yesterday hours after John’s death, Jenny — affectionately called The Booby by her husband of nearly 50 years — said he had “defied medical science” by beating the sepsis.
But she said it left him too weak to overcome cancer.
She added: “The cancer was small and you would normally have an op to remove it, but because he was so ill he couldn’t do it. They said they would have killed him if they had done an operation.
He couldn’t live without it. I think that was when the downfall began. He felt he’d been destroyed
“The cancer spread and whenever he had and immunotherapy it left him weaker and weaker and then you get an infection. That’s how he died. But we had the best doctors. They did all they could.”
On keeping his treatment secret, Jenny said he “didn’t want people to know” — and also insisted his love of cigars was not to blame.
Turning her sights on Channel 4, she said: “When they decided that they didn’t want John his life kind of fell apart. It was how they did it.
“He was in America and they didn’t tell him until a few minutes before they put out a press release.
“John was devastated. He told me he couldn’t live without it. I think that was when the downfall began. He felt he’d been destroyed.”
So incensed was John by his axing, he took the broadcaster to an employment tribunal. He accused them of ageism and sought damages of £3million.
But he lost his case with witnesses saying he was dropped for being “offensive” and “irritating”. The panel described him as “bigoted and a male chauvinist”.
Speaking in October last year, John said his life lacked any purpose following his dismissal and that he filled his days watching the same television shows.
Jenny — whose Booby nickname was in reference to a bird that is “stupid and pathetically easy to catch and squawks a lot” — backed up his comments.
Speaking from a cafe close to their home in Primrose Hill, North London, she added: “I’d go out with the dogs but he was always watching sport — even in the hospital, until yesterday, he was watching all the telly.
“He watched so much Jeremy Kyle it drove me mad.”
Before his axing by Channel 4, John’s relationship with Jenny had come under scrutiny following their appearance on Celebrity Wife Swap in 2006 when they switched partners with Tory MP Edwina Currie and her husband John Jones.
‘LIVING WITH JOHN WAS HELL’
The former bookie was accused of misogyny by Edwina over how he treated his wife — with many viewers and commentators saying she was treated like a “lackey”.
Still irked by the criticism more than a decade later, Jenny said: “With my generation, women didn’t go out to work, did they? It wasn’t, ‘Oh, I’ve got to have a job’.
“I was brought up to learn how to cook. As a child I liked to bake. I could cook anything, so it didn’t matter to me.” Jenny, who studied hotel management after leaving school, admitted last year that living with John was “hell” and described him as a “nuisance”.
But she said she never considered walking away from their marriage and insists he had a caring side — telling close friends on his death bed to “look after The Booby”.
She said: “I remember myself and John taking part in a TV debate where these woman who had three or four marriages said to me, ‘How can you put up with this?’.
“And I said, ‘Look, you’ve been married so many times. Don’t you think you have to have a bit of give and take. You have one husband and you chuck him out and you get another one and that’s not good and you have another one. Nobody’s perfect. Can’t you just try and live with what you know — make a go of it?’.”
She also defended John’s choice of The Booby as a pet name, saying: “You get these people on TV saying, ‘Oh, that’s terrible’ and ‘I hate this’. Well, it’s affection.
“If I don’t mind, why should somebody else tell me I should mind? I can’t be bothered with it.”
Jenny also said those who saw him in his final days got to see the real John. She said: “The people at the hospital who brought him tea, they were in tears. They said he wasn’t what they imagined and that he was so kind and polite.”
The couple, who met at a party in 1969, never had children amid rumours John didn’t like kids.
Everybody says he brought racing television alive
But, again, Jenny says people got the wrong end of the stick. She said: “We’ve just not had them and I couldn’t go down all this route of IVF. I like them — it’s not a choice.
“It’s not like John didn’t like children. He’d have had to have put up with them, wouldn’t he?”
John was famed for his trademark facial hair, deerstalker hat, tic-tac hand signals and his larger-than-life personality.
But Jenny hopes John will be remembered as a “campaigning journalist” rather than his controversial reality TV appearances. She said: “Everybody says he brought racing television alive and to a bigger section of the population.
“And some said he made it fun for people. And I think he transcended.
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“People watched racing because of what he was doing. And he enjoyed it. He enjoyed it all.”
Jenny also confirmed that John will not have a funeral. Instead, he will be cremated with only his wife and a friend in attendance.
His ashes will be scattered on the site of the furlong post at the former Alexandra Park racecourse in North London — where John’s love of horse racing first took hold.
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