The Observer said:Andrew Marr has always had the air of a man in a hurry, urgent with purpose and a sense of destination. On Twelfth Night, 6 January this year, however, the wheels came off the Andy Marr roadshow. Here, in his own words, is what happened. "It had been a not particularly busy day. I came home at six, cooked the family meal, and went out to the garden shed."
When his ageing knees gave up on him, Marr, an avid runner, had installed a rowing machine. "I was pushing myself to do something like 5km in 20 minutes, which is a challenge even for a professional oarsman let alone a sedentary journalist," he recalls, reliving his crisis. "I was really pleased with myself but at the same moment I felt I'd done something stupid. It wasn't painful but I knew something had gone wrong."
Marr returned to the house to serve the family meal. "Now I felt sick," he continues, "and I had this blinding headache. Flashes and a cascade of brilliantly coloured lights. I thought it was a migraine. Really, I had no idea. My grandmother, an indomitable woman, had suffered a stroke, which I associated with something that happened to older people. "
Jackie, his wife, seeing that he was unwell, tried to get him to go to casualty but Marr refused. "We all sat and watched a silly film [The American starring George Clooney]. Then I went to bed, took some painkillers and fell asleep. The next thing I remember is waking up in the morning lying on the floor, having fallen out of bed. I remember thinking, This is a really stupid thing to have happened just an intense feeling of irritation such a bad way to start the day. I still had no idea what was going on. Eventually I did struggle to my feet but I could not lift my leg to get into the shower. When I looked in the mirror and saw the downward droop of my mouth I realised I'd had a stroke."
The word sounds so inoffensive, a synonym for "brush" or "caress". You "stroke" a baby or a lover, but its old English origin connotes "a blow" and "a calamity". Make no mistake, stroke is deadly. Next to cardiac disease and cancer it's the most common cause of death in the western world. Approximately one third of those who suffer a stroke will die, often from a second subsequent assault on the brain. Of those who survive, about half will be left with permanent and severe disability. The physical consequence of stroke is a horrifying catalogue of damage that includes personality changes, impaired sensation, paralysis, incontinence, visual or language problems, deafness, blindness and seizures.
In Britain about 150,000 people a year will have some kind of stroke. That's one every five minutes. On this January morning, with Marr's fate poised on a knife edge, the family had telephoned for an ambulance. All Jackie could do was wait. "I was terrified," she remembers, joining our conversation with a solicitous air. "I thought he was going to die."
Andrew Marr has just turned 54, which is young to have a stroke but not exceptional. Although stroke is associated with old age, about 20% occur under the age of 40, sometimes to teenagers and, more horrifyingly, to young mothers. As a stroke sufferer, Marr had crossed from what Susan Sontag (in Illness As Metaphor) calls "the kingdom of the well" to "the kingdom of the sick". He did not yet know this new country. Soon, however, it would be dawning on him that he was no longer the person he'd been on New Year's Eve. Willy nilly, he would have to acknowledge his forced emigration from good health.
Jackie Ashley with her husband, Andrew Marr Brought together by the crisis: Jackie Ashley with her husband, Andrew Marr, at an awards ceremony in 2009. Photograph: The Picture Library
I know all this because, 18 years ago, I too suffered a severe cerebral haemorrhage, and survived. I wrote a book about it, My Year Off, and ever since have been invited to counsel some well-known stroke sufferers, from the avant-garde theatre director Max Stafford-Clark, to the Tory grandee Douglas Hurd, and the film star Kirk Douglas. When Marr, whom I know slightly from his time on the Observer, was struck down, I wrote offering support. His wife, Jackie Ashley, is a columnist on our sister paper the Guardian. I knew from experience that the burden of convalescence falls on partners and children, placing a strain on even the most happy families.
So, not long after, I found myself one cold winter's night being shown into Marr's private room on the sixth floor of the Charing Cross hospital. Like all visitors to a new patient's bedside, I did not know quite what to expect. What kind of stroke had he suffered? The crucial question was: on which side of Marr's brain had the stroke occurred, left or right? The two halves of the brain have different functions. The right brain specialises in some aspects of emotional processing and musical perception. The left side deals with reading, writing, numeracy and language. If you must have a stroke, thank your stars it's right side not left. As a broadcaster, Marr was lucky, with a right side haemorrhage: he would retain his language and memory.
Left or right side, however, this is still a devastating assault. The brain is only 1.4 kg of grey matter. You could hold it in the palm of your hand. But it's you your command post, your HQ, your speech and movement, your window on the world. There's no escaping a stroke's impact on your consciousness. More than an "insult to the brain", it's an earthquake.
What would I find? A drooling vegetable or a perky Scot ? In fact, neither: Marr was sitting up in bed with his laptop, subdued, serious and slightly remote. There was a pile of books on the bed, and he was working. Barely a fortnight after his stroke, his speech was remarkably strong, his mind intact and his zest for life undimmed. He began to reel off the literary and journalistic projects he was juggling. It struck me at once that he was unwilling, or unable, to acknowledge what had happened. I gave my routine homily about future limits, offered what advice I could, and said goodbye, mindful of the likely fatigue he would be suffering. I heard later that he had been dispirited by my visit. However, eight months on, he has agreed to this interview, so something must have struck a chord, somewhere.
We're sitting in the garden of the family home on a Sunday afternoon, with Marr's exceptional recovery a testament to his dogged resilience. Still, I'm curious to find out how soon he came to terms with what had happened. What was it like for such a self-confident, even abrasive, character, to be brought so low? At this point, Ashley interrupts to comment, "I think it's still sinking in." Her interventions will punctuate the conversation that follows. I sense that there's a lot at stake here between them, as you'd expect after such a crisis. As adults, we forget that we live in our bodies. The sudden and unexpected failure of the body is a shocking catastrophe that threatens the flimsy edifice we call the "self", with a corresponding strain on intimacy.
It's both shocking and confusing. If you survive a stroke, a common first reaction is euphoria. Marr, man of purposeful optimism, and buoyant with self-belief, decided he was "going to be fine, very soon". Actually, the aftermath is often a rollercoaster. He now admits he had "completely unrealistic expectations about what was going to happen". He even, madly, began to plan a holiday to St Petersburg. Ashley, meanwhile, was coping with the long faces of her husband's doctors and the prospect, as she puts it, with fine English understatement, that "This could be it". On at least two occasions she was told to prepare herself for the worst.
Marr, who mostly slept through his brushes with death, was oblivious to the dramas of his bedside and the potentially "catastrophic side-effects" of his post-stroke treatment. When he came round, he remembers riding another high. The news had broken, and it was everywhere. "I was overwhelmed," he says. "Messages. Flowers (from Annie Lennox, Rupert Everett and Helen Mirren)." He smiles. "A food parcel from Prince Andrew." Surreal as this phase undoubtedly was, Marr remembers it as "quite pleasing", a nice validation of his battered self-image.
His boyish self-gratification at this attention is so palpable that I wonder if there had been a darker side. I, for instance, remember being very tearful in hospital, a common side-effect of a stroke. But Marr says he remained dry-eyed. "I don't do tears." Like the man on the couch in the New Yorker cartoon, he seems to believe that his personal life is none of his own damn business. Or perhaps he's unwilling to speak candidly in front of his wife, or afraid to rouse the Cerberus of his unconscious mind. He was, however, not wholly without feeling. "I worried about my physical state. I was very confused. A lot of things I blanked out but occasionally I did think to myself, Is this the future?"
Ashley takes up the story in a wifely way. "It was very scary. No one of course can tell you what will happen, or how long it will take. Different doctors tell you different things. I often asked myself, 'Will he be the same person?'''
Marr, in fact, became even more like himself, dealing with his stroke as he has dealt with all life's challenges, by coming out fighting. Brushing aside any assault on his inner "self", he filed this emergency under "physique", not "psychology", a stunning assertion of self-will. Within about three weeks, he says, "I was doing lots of physio. It was very, very hard, but my physio and OT nurses were superb, always optimistic and very cheerful." He pays tribute to his immediate circle, "I've been very lucky in all respects. With Jackie and the children, and with a wonderful circle of very close friends."
This seems the moment to introduce a vexed question from the past. As many people know, an extramarital affair and Marr's mistaken belief that he had fathered another child, an episode he tried to suppress with super-injunctions, had placed his marriage under strain. How were Marr and Ashley doing now?
Hardly missing a beat, Marr tells me: "Jackie does not like the notion that she suddenly sprouted wings and became a Florence Nightingale figure."
"If we need to go back over that stuff," says Ashley, resolute and phlegmatic, "our problems were from 10 years ago. We had moved on anyway." A beat. "I suppose."
"In these crises," Marr interrupts, "you are either brought together or blown apart, and we were brought together."
They certainly feel like a couple who have weathered a lot, and he jokes that his wife now has him where she wants him, under control. Anyway, Marr's stroke has the virtue of putting him beyond reproach. Moreover, it has given him a platform on which to demonstrate his fighting spirit. Finally, after a terrible year, through sheer grit, he has not only survived, he has begun to make a return to his old life. Further, he has been blessed by employers only too eager to adjust their schedules to his absence.
Tune into BBC1 on Sunday morning and you will find the corporation complicit in Marr's convalescent strategy of stout denial. At 9am the channel projects its own version of Groundhog Day: a vigorous Andrew Marr striding purposefully into the studio of the show that still bears his name. Always a contrived fiction, this sequence juxtaposes a poignant fantasy of a fully fit presenter with the merciless world of hard news. Once the show starts, someone definitively not Marr Jeremy Vine, Eddie Mair, or Sophie Raworth will stand in for the convalescent host, piloting each episode through shoals of Sunday morning speculation, showbiz gossip, the forthcoming weather and some agenda-setting interview with a big beast from Westminster.
I find Marr's exit from his long sequestration, signalled by this exclusive interview, utterly in character. He is coercing his stroke and its after-effects to his career while at the same time forcing himself, he says, to slow down. "I had been working at an insane rate," he goes on. "That was my fault. It was what I chose to do. I had this idea that I could do more than anybody else." He breaks off to remind me of his schedule: Start the Week, The Andrew Marr Show, History of the World, the overseas filming
"Eighteen-hour days," his wife interrupts. "Seven days a week."
"In hospital I remember thinking," Marr continues, "that I have gobbled life too much. I have gone racing from one thing to the next and never enjoyed the moment. From now on," he concludes, with slightly grim relish, "I'm going to suck the juice out of life."
Did he experience any moment of spiritual revelation?
"Am I religious? No. Do I believe in anything? No. I just don't have that bump." Very matter-of-fact, he adds: "My family are religious and go to church." A pause. "And I went to church as a boy."
For a moment he seems strangely young and vulnerable. I remember that stroke units like to promote psychotherapy. Did anyone suggest he talk to someone about his illness ? "There was a bit of that." Marr shakes his head. "But I'm not that way."
Ashley breaks in with a hearty laugh. "What he says is: 'I'm not depressed. I was depressed before, but I'm not now.'"
As Marr and his wife chuckle about this together, I have a picture of a man who has found himself repurposed by his extraordinary bad luck. I suspect that the overachieving Scots outsider has been strangely re-energised by his cerebral crisis. After all, it confirms what he has always known: that it's Andy Marr contra mundi. Of course, Marr won't go down this avenue, cheerfully claiming to be indifferent to the issues of his private self.
"I've got no inner life," he declares merrily, something that is plainly untrue. "I've no interest in exploring my murky depths. Yes, of course, I've been searching for meaning, but not much."
Andrew Marr Walking slowly: Andrew Marr photographed last week in the garden of his London home. Photograph: Phil Fisk for the Observer
Did he ever feel punished by his fate ? He pauses. "That's an appealing thought but I don't think I did. I'm an irreligious Calvinist. I never thought, as some people do, Why me? I never asked that question. No, I thought, Of course me! I'm exactly the kind of person who would have a stroke. I've had a life of overreaching. I've not been particularly nice to people around me, and have obsessed about my public profile. I haven't spent enough time talking to my children." He slips, tellingly, into the past tense. "I was an impatient little bugger and often too abrasive. I'm just going to have to move more slowly now."
Suddenly reflective, Marr now confides that he has been reading the poetry of George Herbert, and adds: "What I do instead of praying or meditation is that I draw. In hospital I couldn't but in late spring I found I wanted to draw again." This, he concludes, is one sign of some inner communion with what he calls "the life force".
Beneath the eye of eternity, he becomes momentarily modest: "I don't think I'm particularly brave or have had a specially extraordinary experience. I'm in my mid-50s and I've joined a larger world of pain." Ashley interrupts to insist: "You're more sensitised now, more tuned into the world than before." From one of his hospital visits Marr recalls a woman, eight months pregnant, who had suffered a stroke: "There are people far worse off than me who are so incredibly brave and cheerful. I get these heart-rending letters with some awful stories."
Marr has nothing but praise for the NHS, remembering a headline from the Times that read "NHS: No one is safe". "I thought, This is bonkers. I've just had a night of the most dedicated treatment from a team of doctors and nurses. It was NHS doctors who saved my life. Their expertise is extraordinary. I don't believe there is anywhere in the world as good as the best of the NHS. At the National [hospital for neurology in London], at Charing Cross, at Queen Mary's, I've had an extraordinary level of care and attention." He accepts it's not a perfect picture. While the NHS "is fantastic in London and the big cities", the system is not so good at the aftercare stage the physio and occupational therapy. "Too many people get turned out of hospital and dumped in wheelchairs."
Proactive to his fingertips, Marr has met this problem by signing up with Tom Balchin and his controversial ARNI regime (the Action for Rehabilitation from Neurological Injury is a super-vigorous physio regime.) He has also enlisted in an imaginative scheme, pioneered by the National, in which groups of in-patients are lodged in a specially designed hotel and bussed back each day for treatment. "I was determined," he says of this programme, "that I was not going to end up on a scrapheap, determined I was going to go back to work." Seven months after his stroke he can now function from day to day but walks slowly and with a limp. His left arm and hand remain paralysed, a source of deep frustration. Unable to touch type, he uses the Dragon voice recognition software.
"I'm going back to the Sunday show in September and will see how it goes," he says, with only a hint of nervousness about the risks involved. "I'm going to put more time and effort into it, renew my lobby pass and return to my Westminster haunts."
It's not clear what Ashley thinks about this. So I ask her: "Has he changed?"
"No." She smiles. "Not really."
"Not enough!" Marr exclaims. "I've always been a believer in getting your head down and getting on with it. My grandfather used to say, 'Hard work never killed anyone.' Well, I suppose I've done my best to disprove his theory."
For now, he's listening to Bach cantatas, reading Proust "my cultural life has become much more important to me" and preparing to visit the Peter Doig exhibition in Edinburgh. "I feel more alive again," he says. "All this has made me, I hope, kinder and nicer. Over the years I've had lots of fights with lots of people but now I'm going to try reconciling myself to them. Life is too short for feuds and battles. I'll aim to be sweeter all round."
Marr won't cease to be a loner or a struggler. When I ask how he sees his future, he replies: "Do less, better." He pauses in thought. "Quite a bit less, a lot better." He looks across the garden to the scene of his near-fatal workout. "One day I want to go and sit in a shed and paint all day. But not yet."
http://www.theguardian.com/media/2013/aug/04/andrew-marr-stroke-robert-mccrum
Its a rather good read, thought I'd share with those of you who may have missed it.