25/10/2024
Part 1 analysis of another revealing video sent to us. This time Norman McNamara being interviewed recently by The Senior Care Influencer Lance A. Slatton of All Home Care Matters, much respected in the US both as an author and as an expert in long-term care. From beginning to end of this interview/video the questions are not answered as respectfully as they should be, and certainly not showing respect for Lance Slatton the interviewer, his work and dementia. In fact, the answers are mostly lies. But Lance Slatton would have no way of knowing the extent of the deception being played out before him.
Blooper 1:
When asked what prompted the creation of Purple Angel, we are given to understand by McNamara that he was given rubbish advice when first diagnosed. “Use it or lose it”, said his consultant and waved him goodbye. NOT TRUE.
According to McNamara in many other interviews that was “the best piece of advice I was ever given” by what he has described as a wonderful consultant specialising in dementia. Which is it? Can’t be rubbish and brilliant advice, can it? McNamara was given much advice and support from our Alzheimer's Society when he was also a volunteer at one of their local Memory Cafes in Torquay.
Why not tell the truth?
Blooper 2:
“I lost my grandmother to dementia, and I lost my father to dementia, but I also lost a relative who was 36.” NOT TRUE. Cousin Stephen was 62 when he sadly died with dementia.
Why not tell the truth?
Blooper 3:
Batten disease is NOT a form of childhood dementia. It is the name given to several different inherited or genetic life-limiting neurodegenerative diseases that share similar features, with over 400 mutations, and which normally begin in childhood.
https://www.ucl.ac.uk/ncl-disease/ncl-resource-gateway-batten-disease/what-batten-disease
Why not learn about it? Why use it incorrectly to support a fictitious life?
Blooper 4:
“But it wasn’t until I’d been up North and seen my Mum when she was still alive then. A week later I said to Elaine why don’t we go and see my Mum and she said we’ve just come back and I had no memory of it whatsoever and Elaine said there’s something wrong here and when you’ve been married for as long as I have, and your wife says you need to see a doctor, you need to see a doctor.”
NOT TRUE and not the usual story told by McNamara about how he came to be diagnosed.
However, he has also claimed that he had to retire from work at the age of 50 because of heart failure. Work? What work?
Blooper 5:
As anyone who’s ever met dementia will know, not all people with dementia are incontinent. Perhaps McNamara’s incontinence was caused by his excessive drinking of alcohol, when he spent 10 years as a vagrant, travelling with the Gypsy community. Until he stole from them – and they pursued him across the country.
Blooper 6:
“Dementia’s nothing like losing your memory” he says. Well, his dementia has not had any impact whatsoever on his normal life, not even after 18 years. That is extremely unusual and unlikely.
Dementia is indeed about memory loss; it is about losing life skills; it is about losing the ability to think and to solve problems; it is about losing language; it is about behaviour too. Dementia is more than meets the eye when you meet Norman McNamara.
Blooper 7:
“My wife’s been a professional carer for 30 years” – REALLY??? Are you sure about that?
Blooper 8:
“We came up with the name Torbay Dementia Action Alliance” – NOT TRUE. There were Dementia Action Alliances all over this country, all created because of the actions of the Alzheimer’s Society and as a direct result of UK government initiatives too.
Blooper 9:
When asked whether he and his ‘wife’ have children, he replies “We do – we have quite a lot of grandchildren”.
BUT NOT TOGETHER and NOT AS A COUPLE.
When asked about whether those children were not still living at home with him, he replies “Ours had all left home – because we were very young”. NOT TRUE
When he first met Elaine c. 1995, he was by then almost 40 and she was almost 41 and just out of her second divorce with 2 adult children and one teenager to her credit. McNamara had deserted his young 19-year old wife in 1981 while she was pregnant with their 3rd child. He had nothing to do with those 3 children of his for the next 30 years of their life, and had no contact whatsoever with the 3rd son who died of a drug overdose at the age of 29, never having known his father. They had all changed their surname too, abandoning the name of McNamara just as he had abandoned them while they were still babies.
Blooper 10:
Lance Slatton asks “What was your job before all of this?”
McNamara replies “I was a comedian”.
THERE’S A LOT OF TRUTH IN THAT REPLY.
He then goes on to say “I was a manager. I managed – what would you call it? – B&Q – a big, huge hardware store”.
NOT TRUE. No way is that true. He worked in the gardening section of a relatively small store for a couple of years in Torquay – before it went bust!!! He may have been a shelf-filler.
That’s the first 25 minutes of an interview that lasted over an hour. More to come in Part 2.