Ayda Field and Robbie Williams have opened up about life in lockdown in their new podcast episode, revealing how they self-isolated apart for the first few weeks to protect Ayda's mother, who was diagnosed with cervical cancer earlier this year.
Revealing the news on their podcast, which they hadn't recorded since Christmas, Ayda was explaining how she and Robbie, who was told to self-isolate in a Los Angeles hotel after returning from a trip to Melbourne, would see each other 30 feet away in their garden when their children were asleep, but they were soon advised to stop as the risk wasn't worth it.
"For us there was a very real possibility that I could do serious damage to your mum's health," Robbie told Ayda.
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"My mum in January was diagnosed with Stage 2 Cervical Cancer and it had spread outside the cervix and was a very aggressive tumour so alongside her Parkinson's and her Lupus was this cancer battle and because the cancer was so big they decided that she needed to immediately go into chemo and radiation daily and have surgery," Ayda explained.
"Which also meant she was going to miss the birth of our son which I remember being kind of a tough pill to swallow but that was before the pandemic, we were thinking about the birth of bubba. When the pandemic hit it was very scary because my mum with Lupus and Parkinson's and cancer, at 70 years old is prime for some bad things happening so she was going to the hospital every day for these treatments and I just remember every day thinking 'Is she going to pick something up? Is this where it all ends?'" she added.
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Ayda and her mother Gwen are incredibly close and the mother-of-four opened up about her Parkinson's diagnosis last year on Loose Women. Ayda explained how they learnt of the heartbreaking news in October 2018, just before the family travelled to London for Princess Eugenie and Jack Brooksbank's wedding, where oldest daughter Teddy was a bridesmaid. Ayda told her colleagues what a shock it had been to find out that her mum was so ill, and how she didn't know the signs to look out for.
"I didn't know the symptoms of Parkinson's, all I knew was Michael J Fox and shaky hands," she said.
The doting daughter admitted that she had struggled to cope with the news at first, saying: "It's such a confusing time as there are such wonderful blessings in my life, I have this wonderful baby… there were all these moments of joy and then these sharp drop offs where I would be lying in bed crying. There are these weird moments of misplaced anger that I have – there was someone who was talking about Parkinson's and not needing the medication my mum has because theirs isn't as aggressive, and I would then get angry that theirs isn't as advanced as my mum's."