I CHALLENGE anyone who watched Channel 4’s documentary by the comedian David Baddiel not to have been moved and perhaps shocked.

For those who did not see it, the programme was about how the family is coping with David’s father Colin, who has dementia and a particular form of the illness known as Pick’s Disease.

Just a few hours after the transmission of the programme, there was the news that David Cassidy is suffering from dementia.

David Cassidy is a name that may not mean much to the younger generation but it is a name that will mean a lot to people, and especially women, of a certain age.

He was one of the biggest pop idols of the 1970s. While Colin Baddiel is aged 82, by no means ancient by modern standards but clearly in the autumn of his life, David Cassidy is just 66, which is really no age.

It is almost as if dementia is a new disease because, even a few decades ago, we never heard of it but now it is hard to pick up a newspaper or turn on a TV or radio news programme without hearing about the condition.

Of course, it is not new, families have always had a grandad Fred or Aunt May who had gone a ‘bit gaga’ or ‘lost his or her marbles’ – excuse the non PC language but the ‘dementia’ label is relatively recent.

However, although some people can develop dementia frighteningly young, it is largely a disease of ageing and so inevitably, as we live longer, the number of cases will increase.

Dementia does not distinguish between social class or the part of country where we live but it is clearly a bigger problem in a place like Ludlow and the surrounding area by virtue of the fact that there is a disproportionately higher number of older people.

Figures show that there are 72,000 people, or almost one on four of the population, in Shropshire aged 65 or over and this number is expected to increase to more than 91,000 by 2026.

Of those aged more than 65, an estimated seven per cent suffer from some forms of dementia and this figure is also on the increase.

Vivienne Parry a Ludlow member of Shropshire Council, estimates that there are about 250 people with dementia in Ludlow.

How we deal with this issue is perhaps the biggest issue facing the NHS and social welfare services in the coming years.

Of course, if at all possible, it is best that people stay in their own homes and are cared for by their loved ones as long as possible.

But the pressures on families with people with dementia is huge.

In addition to the physical needs that increase with the progression of the illness and the worsening memory loss, there are also often other issues such as abusiveness even physical violence and a loss of sexual inhibition.

One of the saddest aspects of the Baddiel family story for me is that David Baddiel no longer feels he can take his teenage daughter to see her granddad because he is likely to behave in an inappropriate way.

This is a huge issue that will dominate the health and social care agenda for many years and one with which a growing number of families in our part of the world are having to cope.