Fair City soap star David Heap is gradually dying from rare disease, announces actress wife Olwen Fouéré
A soap star is suffering from a rare neurodegenerative disease and is ‘gradually dying’, his actress wife has announced.
David Heap, aged 76, who played Donal Maher in the hit Irish soap Fair City for several years, has a condition called Corticobasal Syndrome, his wife Olwen Fouéré has said.
“I think it’s been building for a while. He knew there was something wrong and this particular disease, called Corticobasal Syndrome, it’s a particular type of protein that attacks the brain – so it’s a brain disease and it affects everything,” ” she told presenter Joe Duffy on RTÉ’s The Meaning Of Life, as reported by local publication Sunday World.
“The symptoms are similar to Parkinson’s. Similar to motor neurone, similar to all, you know, whole spectrum. And it’s progressive and terminal.”
Corticobasal syndrome, also known as corticobasal degeneration, s a rare condition that can cause gradually worsening problems with movement, speech, memory and swallowing. It is caused by increasing numbers of brain cells becoming damaged or dying over time, according to the NHS.
Most cases develop in adults aged between 50 and 70. As a result of these complications, the average life expectancy for someone with the disease is around six to eight years from when their symptoms start. However, this is only an average as the condition is very variable, adds the NHS.
Fouéré, who recently starred opposite Jamie Dornan in season two of the popular BBC series The Tourist, went on to say that Heap accepted his diagnosis better than she did. She said she cried when she learned the news.
“I find it hard to talk about it without crying, and I remember we were in the room with the neurologist, and [when] they said that, I wept. They were really great because they were telling him and .. . . one of the symptoms of the disease is a kind of apathy. It’s a sort of passiveness, which is maybe a blessing.
“But he was just kind of taking it all in. And I started crying. And then when we left, I said to David, ‘you know what they said?’ And he said, ‘yeah, that I’m going to deteriorate’.”
Renowned actress Fouéré, aged 70, went on to say she has now become her husband’s full-time-carer - but that she does need help so she can continue her career. “When I’m home, when I’m not working I’m taking care of him, but he needs full-time care. When I have to go away to work, or indeed, if even if I have to do more than four hours work a day, I have to pay for it.
“Plus, I’ve turned down quite a bit of work in order to try and manage the situation. Nothing that mattered too much. I know it’s very important to continue because that’s where my strength is. My strength will come from my work as well, because you can get very sucked into the caring. The caring situation you become totally immersed in at every moment. And it’s very hard to pull yourself away from it.
“How difficult it is for so many other people? Much worse. The great blessing in this situation is David has little or no distress and he has no pain. So that’s a huge blessing.”
Fouéré and Heap, who have been together for several decades, have also suffered previous tragedies. When they were in their twenties when they lost two babies. Their daughter, Morgane, died a day and a half after she was born 10 weeks prematurely in the mid-80s. Then their baby son, Michael Jo Jo, was found to have when he was still in the womb at five and a half months. After their two babu losses, they decided not to try for another baby.
Speaking to Duffy about the baby losses, Fouéré said: “Life has given you this terrible challenge, you know, a difficult thing, and in many ways, like in terms of the babies, I think I’d much rather have had that experience than not had it at all because they touch you. They touched me on a physical level. They’re still there. They still exist somewhere. They still exist.”
Fouéré and Heap have had an open marriage for almost 30 years as Fouéré fell in love with another man. In the same Duffy interview, she said: “A lot of married people fall in love with other people. “The honesty was very important to us. It was all very open between us. I’m not saying it was civilised in any way. It was full of rage. But we got through it.” “I mean, they are both extraordinary people,” she added, referencing Heap and her unnamed partner.
She also admitted she would have found it difficult to accept if Heap had introduced someone else into their marriage. “I don’t know if the situation had been reversed. I might be in prison now having killed somebody.
“I don’t know if I would have been able to, but we just we didn’t want to separate even though we talked about it, we didn’t want to separate. And it was nothing to do with the marriage thing. It was more to do with the relationship.”
Heap’s Fair City character Donal Maher first appeared in the famed Irish soap back in in 1998. He left the soap in 2004, but his character made a reappearance in the soap in 2020. He also appeared in The Tudors and The Clinic.
Fouéré is an actress, writer and director. She’s known for her roles in The Survivalist, Mandy and This Must be the Place. In 2020, she was listed at number 22 on The Irish Times list of Ireland's greatest film actors.