Remembering Michael Mosley

Why I can't stop thinking about the British medical journalist, producer and presenter who died in Greece, June 2024

Michael Mosley, One Plus One Publicity Image 2018 ABCNews

Friends, I know. It’s my second newsletter in a week. But in the past week, along with legions of fans around the world, I’ve been quietly mourning the death of Dr Michael Mosley, the British health juggernaut. My grief was partly due to the tragic and public manner of his death after a misadventure. He took the wrong walking path in the Mediterranean sun. He didn’t have his phone with him. After an arduous hike, he collapsed metres from the gate of a resort, although whether his life could have been saved at that stage is something we will never know.

His widow, Dr Claire Bailey, described her husband as ‘wonderful, funny, kind and brilliant’. Claire was a General Practitioner (doctor) who worked with him creating recipes and more recently being part of his shows. They met on his first day at medical school in London. I can only imagine her living hell. The couple takes a much needed break from their busy lives to enjoy a week of glorious weather in the Greek islands. The island they stay on is only sixty-five square kilometres in size. I’m sure Michael leaving his phone behind was about disconnecting from the incessant prod of waiting projects. Lots to sign off on. Always. Then, after setting off with his trusty umbrella, water, hat and sunglasses, the searing heat and longer-than-anticipated route led to the unimaginable; death, at the age of sixty-seven. Now we all have to learn to live without Michael.

You can tell a little about a person after spending an hour with them as I did in 2018, interviewing Michael on my TV show One Plus One. It’s the way someone treats the make-up artist as they sit down in the comfy chair for a spot of nice, matte coverage. It’s how they chat with their publicists, pause in the hallway when stopped for fan photos, meet the studio crew, joke with the operators, the director and producer. Then finally, they’re introduced to me, the interviewer, who is going to settle them down and pose questions to them for up to an hour.

Sometimes guests just want it to be over and done with. They didn’t want to be there. An interview was about publicity, nothing more. Being there, in-person, taking two hours out of their day could be considered a waste of time. I understood that. But I secretly hoped that each guest saw in the interview an opportunity, to ‘meet me in conversation’ as Jane Austen put it in Emma. To set aside the world and bring their full presence to the conversation with the possibility of vulnerability and to illuminate, explore and delight.

Michael Mosley and me, One Plus One publicity image. 2018 ©ABC News

During the interview, Michael talked about his shock type 2 diabetes diagnosis in 2012. He would have been about fifty-three at the time, the same age as his father Bill when he received his diabetes diagnosis. Bill Mosley died aged seventy-four, which was far too young in his son’s eyes.

Jane: what kind of a life did your father have, particularly towards the end?

Michael: Well, he was seriously overweight. He had heart failure, probably as a result of type 2 diabetes, because if you have type 2 diabetes, it doubles your risk of heart disease, stroke, impotence, having an amputation, things like that. It's a serious illness, even if you're being treated with medication. And he also showed early signs of dementia. Again, dementia is sometimes categorised as type 3 diabetes. There’s a very strong link between diabetes and dementia. So he had the full house and he was only seventy-four when he died. And the last few years of his life were, well, he wasn't in great shape. 

You know, it stays with me, the image. I mean, I love my father; I was really fond of him. He was a fantastic guy and I'm sorry he was not around to see the kids grow up. And I think that's because the advice he received was terrible. It was the conventional kind of low-fat diet, put on all sorts of medications, and I wish I could tell him now what I know now, as opposed to what I knew then.

In the interview, Michael also spoke of his own diagnosis. He was told the disease is progressive and irreversible he was immediately expected to go on medication. Instead, he questioned this advice.

“You know, when I was at medical school, we learnt nothing about nutrition. My son is at medical school (now), he's learning nothing. It doesn't feature as part of the curriculum. 

Exercise also does not feature. 

So, (as a doctor) if you have a patient in front of you, what advice do you offer them? You learn a lot about pharmaceutical products and things like that. So the natural role you have is to say, "Take this pill," because unless you have a passionate interest in the area, you're never going to inform yourself about it. 

Michael didn’t opt medication. Instead, he adjusted his lifestyle. I need to stress that I’m not suggesting anyone stops taking any medication or challenges any medical advice about chronic or life-threatening conditions. It’s the self-advocacy that interests me.

At the time I did the interview, I had recently learned I was pre-diabetic. My doctor told me that I had a window of about ten years to ‘turn the ship around’. If I couldn’t lower my blood sugar levels through diet and exercise, I was likely to develop full-blown type 2 diabetes. It runs in the family so the odds weren’t in my favour.

After the interview I never saw Michael again. I continued to watch his shows and read his books. I still re-read them. I couldn’t quite commit to fasting, but with the help of a dietician I lost some weight, put vigorous exercise at the top of the pyramid and today, my blood sugar is no longer in pre-diabetic range. I am, ‘normal’.

Every now and then a person like Michael Mosley becomes an unmentioned part of your universe. Their work, life, words resonate. If Michael could swallow tape-worms for a science show (which he had thoroughly researched beforehand) could a mortal like me become my own self-aware self-advocate? Since that interview I have investigated aspects of body and soul: how much exercise is enough to age well? What does it mean to age well? Should I take hormones? How do I approach changing bone density? Am I as cognitively sharp as I used to be and what’s a useful and affordable baseline test? Should I take supplements to improve my gut-health? What else should I be doing?

These are all lifestyle questions. Michael Mosley investigated modern lifestyle with his trademark curiosity, rigorous research and most importantly an ability to explain and distil complex ideas. He was a skilled communicator.

Apart from the public shock of Michael’s death and my deep sadness for his family, here’s the reason I am devastated that we have lost someone like Michael. I really hoped he was going to show us how to grow old. He really was a juvenile geriatric. At a time when we desperately need to rewrite the pathways to ageing well (rather than the current focus on longevity), Michael would have helped us make sense of the confusing science. He would have put his ageing body to the test. He could have enticed tens of thousands of us out of our comfort zones. He would have done it with humour, with clarity, finding many takeaways for us to choose from the picnic basket.

This was a project I was really looking forward to. But for now we are just bereft.

RIP Michael Mosley 1957 - 2024

The full interview is here: