“I have to have carers now looking after me. Somebody dresses me in the morning, somebody undresses me at night, somebody gets my food for me.”
The GB News star reveals he’s going through one of the toughest periods of his life after back surgery left him largely confined to a wheelchair and relying on carers.
Eamonn’s also adjusting to the end of his 14-year marriage to Ruth Langsford and an estimated £250,000 tax bill from the HMRC, branded “the Department of Thievery” by the typically outspoken Belfast man, which cost him his beloved home in the city.
But the 65-year-old – a TV face for nearly five decades – is determined to look on the bright side of his success with a tour of his autobiography, This is My Life, around Northern Ireland next month.
Eamonn Holmes. Photo: Mike Marsland/WireImage
News in 90 Seconds – October 20th
“You can put your life on hold or you can try and do something. I was doing nothing and I thought I can’t do this. I have to get out there and talk to people,” Eamonn told the Sunday World this week.
He’ll share his humble beginnings in Belfast, when his dad once had to ask the UDA not to attack his family, why he worked in a bar for two years after he’d become a prime time news anchor, and the famous friendships he’s valued.
The star, who’s recovering from recent cataract surgery on both eyes, also hopes he’ll be able to share good news about his health with fans. He suffered severe back pain following a double hip replacement in 2016, but the surgery two years ago which relieved the pain left him able to walk only short distances.
“I’m being tested for suitability for stem cell replacement next week to see if it would have any effect on my back and legs because I’ve been two years in a wheelchair,” he says.
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“I have to have carers now looking after me. Somebody dresses me in the morning, somebody undresses me at night, somebody gets my food for me.
“I have to be tested with spinal injections to see if it will take, and then grow some life back into my spine and legs. It’s all very experimental. I’ll know next week.
“I’d say this is the toughest stage of my life ever. And I just battle on,” says Eamonn.
The health struggles follow a tough 2024 for the presenter with the end of his marriage to Ruth Langsford, with whom he has 23-year-old son Jack. Eamonn also has three children from his first marriage.
A long-running tax dispute with HMRC over his employment status cost him his Belfast base last year, which he reveals was a personal as well as a financial blow.
“I always took the view I was freelance because I worked in so many different places, and the taxman agreed with that,” he says.
“And then they phoned me up and said, ‘we’ve changed our minds,’ and that is just the Department of Thievery. They looked for 10 years back tax and National Insurance and I lost my house in Belfast.
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“God I miss it. The trouble is I now need to work because I’ve got no money and you need to work to pay for carers and staff and medical appointments but I can only do that in London.”
He’s become one of the biggest stars on GB News, presenting three days a week. The presenter is not afraid to air his opinions, including the view that his former ITV colleague Phillip Schofield, who stepped down after revelations of an affair with a young show runner, is a “narcissist”.
Despite his career success on GMTV, Sky’s Sunrise, This Morning and a host of other TV commitments, Eamonn admits in his early days he feared his career wouldn’t last.
For two years after he took over UTV’s flagship news show Good Evening Ulster, replacing Gloria Hunniford, he kept working as a barman.
“I would present that and say goodbye at seven and at half past seven I’d appear behind the bar where I’d worked from when I was 16, the Christian Brothers Past Pupils Union.
“One night Pat Thompson, the head barman, said to me, ‘what’s all this?’
“I said to him, ‘but Pat this TV lark will never last’. He just pulled my bowtie off and said, ‘it will last’.”
On his tour Eamonn is determined to dispel the myth that he’s led a privileged life. He’ll share early memories of the ordinary upbringing he led in north Belfast as one of five boys, including early experiences of the Troubles.
After one house move he was delighted to have a garden, but the Ulster Workers Council strike in 1974 led to fears of sectarian attack.
“We were one of only three Catholics in 100 houses,” says Eamonn.
“I remember my dad went to the UDA and he basically said, ‘I’ve got five sons. We’re Catholic and you know we are. You’ve put two blast bombs on the doors of Catholic families’.”
“This is the power of my dad, who was a carpet fitter. He just laid it out. He said, ‘we’re no harm or no threat to you. We just want to lead our lives’.
“It was unbelievable. We weren’t harmed.”
The contrast with those tough early days is the succession of stars he’s interviewed, including David Bowie, Dolly Parton, John Travolta, Pierce Brosnan and his lasting friendship with James Bond star Roger Moore, which started when Moore approached him in a restaurant.
“We became really good friends. I brought him to football. I brought him to John Daly’s chat show in Belfast and we sang Singin’ in the Rain together.
“We shared a car to Belfast International Airport and we were really late for the last flight, and they held the flight for us.
“We were speeding up the road and he was holding on to the side of the seat and I said, ‘what’s wrong with you?’ and he said, ‘I hate fast cars’.
“I said, ‘but you’re James Bond’. We sat on that plane and I’ve never had a funnier journey in my life,” says Eamonn.
Tickets for Eamonn Holmes This is My Life are available from www.SDEntertainment.co.uk.