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'HE'S TRAPPED'
I’ve lost my charismatic Bill star husband to aphasia – the same illness as Bruce Willis, reveals Chris Ellison’s wife
AS hard-nosed copper DCI Frank Burnside in The Bill, actor Chris Ellison was famous for his terse one-liners.
But now Chris, 75, has been cast into a twilight world with the same speech debilitating illness as Hollywood action movie Bruce Willis.
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The decision of Die Hard actor Bruce, 67, to reveal his aphasia has inspired Chris to share his own diagnosis, which only a few family and friends knew about.
Aphasia is when parts of the brain to do with language are damaged and it can sometimes strike after a stroke or head injury.
Chris’s wife Anita, 69, told The Sun on Sunday: “It’s awful, we’ve been so lonely. Chris is trapped in his body. He can understand everything going on around him but can’t speak, read or write.
“He has not uttered any sense in 18 months. Sometimes I feel as if I have lost my charismatic, very funny and caring husband.
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“It’s frustrating for us both but when he looks into my eyes I see he’s still in there. I have cried buckets, it’s a kind of mourning. But he’s still here with us, still very caring and loving.”
Chris was diagnosed with aphasia after a severe stroke in the summer of 2020.
Loyal wife of 42 years Anita found him on their bedroom floor at their Brighton home and “realised straight away he’d suffered a stroke”.
Ambulance crew could not move his body down their narrow spiral stair so took him through a roof skylight before he was airlifted to hospital.
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But medics were unable to remove the blood clot safely and told Anita to “prepare for the worst”.
Her voice wavering, she recalls: “Chris couldn’t move his tongue, he couldn’t move anything. Medics warned he might not last the night.”
But he survived and in two weeks was moved to a rehab centre in nearby Haywards Heath where he relearned to walk and feed himself.
But it has since been a long road to recovery.
Anita says: “His face had dropped on the right side and he was constantly dribbling, and in a wheelchair for a while.
“When he relearned to eat he ate like a toddler, with his hands, and dropped food all over him. When he tried to shave he would hold the shaver the wrong way up.”
He is also now relearning the alphabet.
It was at rehab where Chris was diagnosed with aphasia, after a visit from the Say Aphasia charity.
Sufferers can also have trouble understanding others — but not Chris.
When we discuss The Bill — the ITV police soap he starred in on for ten years in the Eighties and early Nineties — he grins from ear to ear and pipes up: “Burnside!”
It’s awful, we’ve been so lonely. Chris is trapped in his body. He can understand everything going on around him but can’t speak, read or write.
Anita Ellison
Crediting the support of children Louis, 40, and Francesca, 32, and carer Grace Whittingham, 21, he places hand on heart and whispers: “Lucky.”
But when he first returned home with his newly diagnosed aphasia, in November 2020, he was too nervous to leave the house.
A local celebrity in Brighton, he feared meeting people and being unable to engage.
Anita says: “When you’ve been a celebrity, people recognise you. So when we go out they’re going, ‘Hi, Chris’, and he would flash me looks.
"He hated it, he couldn’t even say hello. He ended up not going out, he didn’t want to see friends. We have seen a few but it’s frustrating for him. It’s been very lonely for both of us.”
Former The Bill castmate Mark Wingett, who played PD Jim Carver, has been a big support.
Anita says: “He phones up and when Chris hears his voice, he gets a lift.”
Anita, who worked as a model for TV shopping channel QVC, has become a full-time carer for Chris but admits she has struggled.
She says: “I phoned the Stroke Association and said, ‘I need help because I’m losing patience’.
"They’ve sent me details of groups, but I haven’t got time to attend. I phoned the doctor and said, ‘I don’t want to be here. I have been very depressed, as life is extremely different now.
I’m determined to get my Chris back. We will get the good times back. Love and determination will see us through.
Anita Ellison
“But I’m determined to get my Chris back. We will get the good times back. Love and determination will see us through.”
Their home, with views of Brighton seafront, is still full of Chris — including the talented artist’s own seascape paintings and his many Charles Dickens novels.
Anita says: “Chris was a very talented artist. He painted every day. He also loved sailing, cycling, swimming, cooking — and would read a book a day. There was always noise in our house. We often entertained. He was the life and soul, the joke teller. But now it’s quiet.”
Neuroscientist and author Dr Julia Jones says aphasia affects more than 350,000 people in the UK and there is no definitive cure but therapies can help — including music and, if possible, writing and drawing.
Anita hopes speaking about Chris’s condition can help.
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She says: “I want people who come up to him, to talk to him even if he can’t respond. I hope it’ll break the silence.
“I also hope saying he’s got aphasia will help all the people who have it to be more understood.”
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