Dame Judi Dench says she won’t retire despite now being unable to read or write
DAME Judi Dench has revealed her vision is so bad that she can’t read or write and sometimes struggles to cut up her own food.
But the actress tells Louis Theroux on his BBC2 show next week that she does not intend to call time on her six-decade career despite the problem of failing sight.
And even as she discusses just how bad her eyes have got, the 87-year-old merely laughs it off in the candid conversation.
She says with a chuckle: “I went to a dinner a few weeks ago, a rather important dinner.
“It was so dark that I said to my partner David, who was next to me, ‘Have I anything on my plate?’.
“He said, ‘Yes’. I said, ‘Does it need cutting up? So he said, ‘Yes’ and I said, ‘Would you do it?’ He cut it up and handed something to me on a fork and that’s the way I ate it.
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“I don’t know if I finished it, I don’t know what I did. I probably scooped it all up and over the side of the plate for all I know.”
But the Oscar-winning star of a string of TV shows and films — which include the role of M in seven James Bond movies — said she wants to keep acting despite the fact she has advanced macular degeneration.
And she is still a force to be reckoned with, after writing a letter to The Times earlier this month slamming the upcoming series of The Crown as “cruelly unjust” and “damaging”.
Asked by Louis if she will soon return to a set or a stage, Dame Judi says: “As long as I know there aren’t things to fall over.
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“I don’t want to retire. I’m not doing much at the moment because I can’t see. It’s bad.
“But I’ve got to teach myself a new way of learning.
“I have a photographic memory so a person saying to me, ‘This is your line’ . . . I can do that. And I have many people who can help me.
“I’ll teach myself a way, I know I will. So long as I don’t trip over doing it.”
DERMOT DOWN ON JOB AXES
DERMOT O’Leary was once one of the best-known faces on Saturday night TV thanks to hosting The X-Factor – until it got axed.
And the This Morning presenter admits losing jobs like this has hit him hard.
He told the Glittering A Turd podcast: “There have been times, thankfully personally not medically, but certainly professionally, where
I’ve woke up and just gone, ‘S**t, I don’t want to get out of bed today when I’ve lost a job.
It’s something that does not change the world in the grand scheme of things.
“But at that time it’s everything, because you’re in this kind of bubble.”
His advice is to take time out and, ideally, go for a walk.
Dermot added: “The world can seem – whether it’s your job or your health or your relationship or what people think of you – like a million and one little things getting on top of you.
“But just give yourself that ten, 15-minute or half-hour walk.”
JOEL: BP HOST JOB IS MAGIC
BLUE Peter has named its newest presenter – a magician called Joel Mawhinney.
He first appeared on the long-running children’s TV show in 2018 as a guest, showing off his sleight-of- hand tricks.
Joel becomes the 41st recruit in its 64-year history and will host alongside Richie Driss and Mwaksy Muddenda from November 11.
He said: “Becoming a Blue Peter presenter is a surreal and, dare I say it, magical experience.
“I’ve always loved making people smile with my magic and I want to do the same for the Blue Peter audience.
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“They have high expectations and I’ll do my best to live up to them.”
Joel guest-presented the CBBC show in the summer but will be thrown in at the deep end with a road trip to Scotland, which will involve cliff-jumping into Loch Ard.
RICH HAS A GRAND ESCAPE
PETROLHEAD Richard Hammond has had a few close shaves in cars – but his latest near-miss involved a polar bear.
Talking about recent filming in the Arctic for The Grand Tour, the former Top Gear presenter told The Travel Diaries podcast: “We were hunted for a couple of days by a mother polar bear and cub because we were going past a big polar bear migratory path. She was just hanging around.
“We saw her regularly for days and days. I did say, ‘Hang on, we’ve got the dogs with us, there are 20-odd dogs staked out along the tent, surely that’ll scare the polar bear away?’
“They said, ‘Not really, it means if the polar bear comes, it’s really hungry. If a polar bear comes, we know it’s a really brave, hungry polar bear that wants to feed her cub’.
“So many of the places we go to are designed to fit us. That one isn’t. It was an absolute privilege to go somewhere you are stripped back to your bare essentials.”