A SOAP star doesn’t remember he’s left a hit show has he battles dementia.
The actor – who has starred on the long-running programme for 20 years – quietly left the show amid his devastating diagnosis.
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Bryan Murray had played the character of Bob Dylan in Fair City up until last year when his wife Una Crawford O’Brien made the heartbreaking decision.
Reflecting on the choice, Una said: “He wasn’t aware that he was finished either and that was good.
“Once it started to stress him in any way, I knew the time was right for him to finish.”
Una, who also stars in Fair City as Bryan’s on-screen wife Renee, paid tribute to show bosses and crew for their support over the past six years.
She said to the Irish Mirror: “Brigie was incredible; her and the team have facilitated him the best they could and that included everyone – acting, staging, sound – they all helped out. Huge thanks goes to them all.
“They respected my decision late last year when I said he would have to finish up.
“Brigie had always said that she was leaving it entirely up to me, which was the best thing she could have done, because I wanted him to do it as long as he possibly could.”
Speaking about Bryan, Fair City’s executive producer Brigie de Courcy previously said: “We are all very sad about this.
“Bryan has been an absolutely wonderful part of the team for the last 20 years, an integral part of the story and an absolute consummate professional.
“He is the very sort of person, when you have a young actor coming in you say to them, “Go down and watch Bryan and watch what he does, how he occupies the space and how he occupies the screen”.
“Initially we put all of his scripts onto a clipboard so he could read his scene and it was very efficient.
“We ended up with a situation where he had a Bluetooth ear loop and we had a dialogue guide who would actually listen to him in rehearsal and pick up his intonations and his rhythms and then he would repeat it back to him on the floor and then Bryan would then say the line.”
Bryan first arrived in fictional Carrigstown in 2005.
Is it ageing or dementia?
Dementia – the most common form of which is Alzheimer’s – comes on slowly over time.
As the disease progresses, symptoms can become more severe.
But at the beginning, the symptoms can be subtle or mistaken for normal memory issues related to ageing.
The US National Institute on Aging gives some examples of what is considered normal forgetfulness in old age, and dementia disease.
You can refer to these above.
For example, it is normal for an ageing person to forget which word to use from time-to-time, but difficulting having conversation would be more indicative of dementia.
Katie Puckering, Head of Alzheimer’s Research UK’s Information Services team, previously told The Sun: “We quite commonly as humans put our car keys somewhere out of the ordinary and it takes longer for us to find them.
“As you get older, it takes longer for you to recall, or you really have to think; What was I doing? Where was I? What distracted me? Was it that I had to let the dog out? And then you find the keys by the back door.
“That process of retrieving the information is just a bit slower in people as they age.
“In dementia, someone may not be able to recall that information and what they did when they came into the house.
“What may also happen is they might put it somewhere it really doesn’t belong. For example, rather than putting the milk back in the fridge, they put the kettle in the fridge.”