BOB’S SHOCK TO HAVE ARTHRITIS AT 30

COMEDIAN and actor Bob Mortimer was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis at the age of 30. He spoke to Lester Middlehurst in September 1993 about the agonising condition and how he learned to live it. now 62, he is married to Lisa Matthews and the couple have two sons. Mortimer went on to need a triple heart bypass operation in october 2015. FOUR years ago, age 30, I woke one morning in agonising pain and couldn’t move. I had to call an ambulance and was taken to hospital with a suspected cardiac arrest.

They couldn’t find anything wrong with me, so they sent me home again saying it was probably the effect of a bad virus. The next morning, exactly the same thing happened and I had to go to hospital again.

Eventually they diagnosed it as rheumatoid arthritis, but it was about a year before they found any treatment for it.

I was off work for about six months and I had to be dressed. I spent a year under quite powerful, painkiller medication and I just had to lie there not really knowing what was happening to me.

It was so depressing to wake up every morning and the first thing you feel is pain. Even with medication, the illness is still dormant inside you waiting for something to kick off another attack.

Towards the end of a tour with fellow comedian Vic Reeves I was really bad with it.

Because I had to dive about a lot on stage, my joints were becoming very painful and, for the last three nights, I was hobbling to get to the theatre.

It’s stupid to carry on with the stage act really as it is very physical. I’ve just got to make sure I’ve got enough drugs with me. I try to be careful; I don’t run about like I used to and I have had to stop playing football.

But tiny things can bring it on — I was sandpapering a handrail in my house for about 20 minutes recently and that lost me the use of my arm for a week. The thing about rheumatoid arthritis is your body never repairs itself after an attack. The attack takes away the lining of the joints, which isn’t replaced. It’s your immune system attacking your body. People think it’s just old people who get it and they laugh at you and tell you to stop behaving like an old woman. But rheumatoid arthritis is different from osteoarthritis, which does affect old people. When I went to the hospital ward it was full of young people. It’s a sad illness.