Ashley Thomas (John Middleton)

[Perdita]

uberfan, this was already posted right above your post

[lizann]

http://www.mirror.co.uk/tv/tv-news/e...r-john-6691516

a death like mike baldwin

[maidmarian]

http://www.mirror.co.uk/tv/tv-news/e...r-john-6691516

a death like mike baldwin

If I remember correctly -that was another
soap rush job!!
I know they cant play out illnesses in."real
time" -viewers would get bored??
But it does underplay/undervalue what
patients family &carers undergo!!

[maidmarian]

dupl

[Perdita]

I wonder if Ashley will ask Sandy to assist him with suicide now .....

[Telly Watcher]

Yes, I suppose Ashley and Sandy could end up having a joint suicide pact by early 2017.

>
Ashley Michael Thomas is a fictional character from the British soap opera Emmerdale, played by John Middleton. He made his first screen appearance during the episode broadcast on 5 December 1996. It was announced on 22 October 2015, following the in-episode revelation that Ashley was suffering from early signs of dementia, that Middleton would be leaving Emmerdale. His contract ends at the end of 2016, meaning his exit scenes would air in early 2017.
>
Source:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashley_Thomas

[Telly Watcher]

Emmerdale's Ashley Thomas opens up about heartbreaking scenes as his character is killed off

19:30, 9 Nov 2015
Updated 19:38, 9 Nov 2015
By Vikki White

Emmerdale fans hoped things were looking up for vicar Ashley Thomas after he survived being run over.


© ITV

But he has been acting out of character for months – and the plotline will lead to the much loved character being killed off.

This week viewers will watch him begin to crumble when the notebook he has been relying on to conceal his memory loss disappears.

John Middleton, who has played the vicar for almost 20 years, says the scenes when Ashley succumbs to dementia will be some of the toughest in his long stint on the ITV soap.

“Ashley knows that something is desperately wrong and he’s terrified,” says John, 62.

“He’s been using a notebook and is getting increasingly dependent on it for everyday things. When he loses it he’s devastated because it’s his lifeline.”

In a heart-wrenching episode, Ashley will confide in his friend Bob Page, played by Tony Audenshaw, that he suspects he has the incurable condition.

A doctor will confirm the vicar’s worst fears – and he doesn’t take the news well.

“Ashley gets the diagnosis and feels like his life is over,” says John.

“He knows it will depend on how quickly the disease progresses and feels it is desperately unfair. It will shatter him.”

In John’s first full interview since the dementia storyline became public knowledge, he said researching the condition, which included working with an Alzheimer’s disease charity and speaking to the wife of a dementia sufferer, was harrowing.

“I was intimidated when I was first told about the storyline,” says John.

“And there was a certain side of me that was a little sad, because I knew there was only one outcome of this.

“Doing the research, there comes a certain point of the day where I just have to stop, because it gets too much.

“But at the same time I recognise this as an incredibly good story.

"We have no cure for dementia at the moment and it’s so prevalent because we are living for longer.”

As he contemplates the end of an era, John says he’ll look back fondly on his time in the soap – especially because of his fans.

Even those who seem convinced he’s a real vicar.

“I’ve had some bizarre fanmail,” he says, laughing.

“I get confessionals and people expect me to have solutions to their problems. I’m quite frank with them and say I’m not a vicar.

"I even got a letter from ‘God’. I didn’t reply because the one thing we know about God is that he’s omniscient so he’d know what I was thinking.”

For a vicar, Ashley has had a fair amount of scandal in his life. He married Bernice but she had an affair and ditched him.

He then got hitched to Laurel, played by Charlotte Bellamy, but she left him for Marlon Dingle.

Ashley went downhill fast, attacking his dad, losing his job and becoming homeless.

He bounced back and found comfort in the arms of Harriet Finch, played by Katherine Dow Blyton.

Ashley’s love life has been a rollercoaster but, in contrast, John has been married to Christine for 36 years.

“We met through friends in Newcastle when I first started acting,” he says. “It was love at first sight.”

He adds: “She is amused by the fact a lot of people think I’m like Ashley, because she knows the real me and I am very different.

"I’m glad I don’t live in Emmerdale – the most combustible village in North Yorkshire – and that I’m not Ashley.”

Christine has been understanding about the fame that comes with his soap role, including his fan club, the Ashley Appreciation Society, which cheers him on at his charity cricket matches near his hometown of Whitley Bay, in Tyne and Wear.

“My wife accepts that Emmerdale is a bizarre part of my life,” adds John, who has two sons – George, 26, and Jack, 34 – with Christine.

“My boys might have found it harder, particularly at school. Having a dad on the telly is an odd one.

“But the worst mistake you can make is assuming people know you.

“I was in the pub in Whitley Bay and got up to go to the bar and a chap said ‘oh, I know you’. I said ‘yes, yes’ and he said ‘no, you’re in my computer class’.”

From the sound of things, John’s wife keeps his feet firmly on the ground.

“When I was run over in the soap recently I had a stunt double who had just stood in for Ralph Fiennes in James Bond,” he says.

“He was a really nice chap and I felt distinguished to have him as my stunt double.

"I’m a huge fan of James Bond and I told my wife when I got home. But she was totally unimpressed.”

And while Ashley has done well to survive so long in the deadly village of Emmerdale, it has also led to perilous moments.

“Zoe Tate was going bonkers for some reason and set the church alight,” he recalls.

“I dived forward when the explosion happened, on to the crash mat and it was all fine.

“Two nights later I woke up on the floor next to the bed, with my wife going ‘what are you doing?’

“I’d thrown myself out of bed, recreating the stunt. I think I’d been slightly traumatised.”

While John has a few months to go before leaving the soap he is ambitious for his future beyond Emmerdale.

Born in Bradford, John appeared in a Swinton Insurance ad in the early-1990s before a part in Coronation Street as John Hargreaves, who knocked down and killed Lisa Duckworth.

John also had a small part in Emmerdale in 1994 as PC John Jarvis who was investigating the Post Office raid before he came back as Ashley in 1996.

After two decades of playing a man of the cloth, he fancies going to the dark side for his next job.

“I’d love to play a villain, any actor would tell you that,” he says smiling.

“And I’d still love to do theatre where I cut my teeth.

“But I wouldn’t want to do another soap because it can be exhausting.

"If you’ve got a very heavy storyline, you’re in on camera at 8am and you can be doing scenes to do with the death of your child all day.

“If you’re doing that for weeks, it can take its toll emotionally. But a lot of the time it’s a doddle – ‘a pint please, Diane’ and that’s your scene.”

The actor is also a member of the Labour Party and revealed that his career could have been very different.

“I stood as a councillor in the North East and got beat, just at the point when I got the Emmerdale job,” he says.

“I toyed with the idea of becoming an MP and I’m still very close to the party in some respects.

“I could have gone into politics but that’s it... for the time being.”

Read more at:
http://www.mirror.co.uk/tv/tv-news/e...FB_mirror_main

[Telly Watcher]

Dementia death trebles in 10 years

The Sun, 10 November 2015

Deaths from dementia in the UK have trebled over the past decade - and it is now the biggest killer of women.

Some 34,000 females died from the brain-wasting disease last year. It accounted for 13.4 per cent of female deaths, up from 4.7% in 2004.

Overall it claimed more than 51,000 lives. In men, figures have risen from two to seven per cent in a decade.

Dementia claimed 17,177 male lives last year making it the second biggest killer for men behind heart disease.

Cancer remains the largest killer of men and women when all its subtypes are combined, but dementia accounts for more than one in ten deaths.

Dementia now affects 850,000 people but the number of sufferers is expected to top two million by 2051. Jeremy Hughes, head of the Alzheimer's Society said: "It is an alarming reminder of the desperate need for more investment into research to ultimately find a cure.

Data from the Office for National Statistics showed 501,424 people died last year, a fall of one per cent from 2013.

[Perdita]

Emmerdale star John Middleton has been visiting a care home to research his latest storyline.

The actor's character Ashley Thomas was recently diagnosed with early onset vascular dementia, which has no cure.

Emmerdale researchers approached MHA - a charity that provides a range of care services for older people around the UK - in preparation for the storyline.

The charity subsequently arranged for Middleton to visit a home in Ilkley, West Yorkshire, which cares for 14 residents in its specialist Kitwood House dementia wing and a further 33 people in the home.

It's all too much for Ashley
© ITV
Middleton said to The Telegraph and Argus: "The research I started was because I want everything to be accurate.

"I was anxious and careful to be specific about the type of dementia Ashley develops and what we can say about it. What surprised me was how much dementia varies from person to person. People's dementia is as different as their personalities. I very much saw that when I visited Glen Rosa.

"What I have taken away from my visits to Glen Rosa is what friends and relatives notice more about personality changes. We have built that into the scripts. You will notice Ashley will lose his temper with somebody."

When Ashley suggests they split up, Harriet it left hurt and confused
© ITV
He added: "We are very proud of the show and we like to get things right. If we get things right, it reaches out to people."

Emmerdale researcher Liam Johnson added:"When we were first told about the storyline involving Ashley being diagnosed with dementia, we knew we needed to get it right. Despite what people think, dementia is an overarching term for a number of forms so we needed the scripts and storyline to be accurate."

Middleton has confirmed that Ashley's dementia storyline will eventually take him out of the show.

[suzewebb]

Living with a person who had advanced dementia is hard. Really hard and i hope they show the impact on others with this storyline. Only today i took my dad who i care for full time to a church fair and cried on the vicars shoulder during a low moment. Dad was a lay preacher but dementia brought out a vocab in him that couldnt be shown on primetime tv. Also hitting and spitting etc. How much of this could they show on tv?