A Sky Sports presenter has opened up about his grief and alcohol addiction after his wife and mother of his child sadly died from blood cancer in 2017
A Sky presenter has made a gut-wrenching confession nine years after the death of his wife. Beloved host Simon Thomas lost Gemma, 40, to blood cancer in 2017 just three days after she was diagnosed with adult acute myeloid leukaemia.
Simon, 53, and his son, Ethan, 16, were devastated by their loss and the presenter has previously admitted he turned to alcohol as a coping mechanism and bought a bottle of vodka every day.
The TV star has now shared that Ethan, who was only eight when his mum passed away, discovered his father’s alcohol addiction while they were both still mourning. While on Matt Willis’ On The Mend podcast this week he revealed the ways he’d try to hide alcohol and how he’d “hurt” his son by exposing him to things he wishes the child “had never seen.”
He said: “[Ethan] began to cotton on as the months went on. The reason why Daddy would never let him have a sip of his Diet Coke in the evenings wasn’t because it had caffeine in. Well, it was partly that: ‘It’s not great for your bedtime, Ethan,’ but it’s because Dad had something in there he shouldn’t.”
“I’ve left him with all those memories and that’s… that’s probably, in terms of my recovery from all of that period, almost been harder than letting go of the alcohol. It’s been letting go of the shame,” reports the Mirror.
Three years ago, Simon said that “God” had reintroduced love into his life through his partner, Derrina. The pair are now parents to their three-year-old daughter, Talitha, and a two-year-old son, Theo.
The presenter said that Gemma’s passing struck him “like an earthquake”: “We went from Monday night with her being diagnosed with a blood cancer of some sort. For a couple of days, things were looking OK the treatment was going well but then things just cartwheeled out of control.”
“On the Friday she falls unconscious and by 8.30 on Friday morning I’m being told by a consultant: ‘She’s not going to see out the day’.”
“The very foundations on which your life has been built are trembling, there’s a massive life earthquake going on and by 5.45pm on that Friday in November 2017 at the age of 40, with an eight-year-old son and a husband, she’s gone.”
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