EXCLUSIVE: Jeff Brazier speaks for the first time about his battle to help Freddy including how he searched the streets to try and bring him home, and even spoke to the police
Jeff Brazier has bravely spoken for the first time about his desperate battle to save his son Freddy from addiction, revealing how he repeatedly searched the streets to bring him home.
The TV presenter told how he even went to the police for help and tried to physically stop Freddy leaving the house as he struggled to keep him safe.
He admitted: “To see your son suffer in that way and not be able to appeal to his better nature to stop that addiction cycle….I couldn’t do anything to stop it. And I tried standing in front of the front door, I tried going to the police.”
Jeff, 47, said that the “hardest and most challenging” part over the last six years was that Freddy, 22, would suffer from psychosis when he used.
Speaking to Busted star Matt Willis on his On The Mend podcast, he said: “That’s when his behaviour is not his own. And that’s when he’s just walking the streets. And you don’t know what could happen to him.
“I’ve had to go looking for him on countless occasions and trying to bring him to safety, only for him to then flee the minute that you turn your back because he needs to be near the things that he perceives himself to need.”
Jeff said that Freddy had been sectioned, as well undergoing time in rehab, but sadly “that still wasn’t enough for that behaviour to change.”
Jeff brought up Freddy and his older brother Bobby after their mother Jade Goody died from cervical cancer in 2009. And he says that he knows Jade would be fully behind all his efforts to keep their son safe.
He admits: “What else can I do but keep trying? I just keep trying. I’m never going to stop. I just always want to support him. It’s what Jade would be absolutely insisting that I do.”
Jeff also alluded to the difficulties surrounding Freddy’s relationship with his maternal grandmother, Jackiey Budden.
Earlier this year it was reported how Jeff had gone to the courts to try and block contact between Freddy and his grandmother. His son has previously posted a video of him smoking drugs in her Bermondsey flat in south London.
He told Matt: “Fred has been through a lot in the last eight years. In particular, he has a very tricky relationship with his maternal grandmother.
“But oddly, it’s really difficult to protect your child from someone that they’re related to, especially if they’re the last surviving blood relative of the person that you’ve lost that you love the most.”
Jeff has come to realise that he could not force his son to seek help but instead hopes Freddy would reach a point where he was ready to make changes himself.
He explained: “I’ve tried to provide every route that would lead him out of it. And obviously always try and be that voice of reason that encourages him to try this and try that and all these different things that we can do that will take you a step towards being healthier and happier.
“But it hasn’t quite transpired that he’s ready. And what I learned a while ago is that it’s got to be his call. And when he’s ready, and only then really, will you ever see him climbing out of the cycle.”
Freddy previously appeared alongside his father on Celebrity Race Across the World, where viewers saw the pair discuss their complicated relationship. During the programme, Freddy acknowledged how his dad continued to reach out to him even when he pushed him away.
Jeff told Matt that hearing those words had meant a great deal to him because he believed his son understood the efforts being made to help him.
He said: “He understands a lot of what is going on. Why it’s happening, how his choices have maybe led to certain outcomes.
“Sometimes the guard goes up and there’s a lack of accountability, which can frustrate.In the calmer moments, I know that he sees the picture for what it is and knows what he needs.”
Jeff’s determination to support his sons is rooted partly in his own childhood, during which he spent time in foster care before moving into a women’s refuge with his mum and younger brother when he was 13.
He said: “It was a hard period because I was really worried about my mum at the time and the fact that she’d just exited a relationship with my stepdad, which wasn’t healthy for any of us.”
During his conversation with Matt, he recalled how he and Jade had recognised similarities in their experiences when they first got together. Both had been determined to give Bobby and Freddy a different childhood.
Jeff said: “Because I think we both wanted to escape the childhoods that we’d endured. Hers had been worse than mine.
“Not to measure people’s childhoods against one another, but I particularly felt incredibly angry, actually, when she was telling me what she’d been through, the choices that she’d been made to make.
“A few months later, obviously the boys, everyone knows, we weren’t together long before the kids arrived.
“And one thing that we were both united on is we were going to make sure that these kids knew just our love. And it wouldn’t be conditional. It would be absolutely rock solid.
“And whether they were good, bad, indifferent, they were always going to be loved. And that remains in place to this day.”
Jeff admitted that he and Jade had struggled to make their relationship work, despite their hopes of providing a stable family life for their children.
He said: “We wanted desperately for our children to have what we didn’t, i.e. two parents together.
“We did our best at that for quite a significant amount of time. We were both, I don’t know whether using the word broken best fits, but we were broken kids.”
Looking back on their time together, he wondered whether the most important purpose of their relationship had been bringing Bobby and Freddy into the world.
But he admitted he still struggled to make sense of Jade’s death and everything she had missed as the boys grew older.
He said: “I think our relationship, if I was to be really philosophical, it was meant to create those children.
“And then beyond that, I can’t find any meaning around her losing her life when she had so much to give, when she was the fierce, protective mum that they both really could have done with.
“I tried to do as much as I can, but you can never replace. I didn’t ever try and replace.
“I think a lot of people maybe get it wrong when they say ‘you’ve been mum and dad’. I feel disrespectful to Jade if I ever acknowledged that and said,’ yeah, thank you, I have.’ I haven’t.
“I was the dad. I could only play that role. They lost their mum. You can’t fill those boots. No matter who I met and how lovely they were, they were never going to fill that void.”
Jeff revealed how the loss of Jade continued to affect the family more than 17 years after her death. He said: “Her void is felt on a daily basis because our family is far from perfect. We’ve got a lot of challenges that we still face to this day.
“A lot of it is probably, the root source of that is their loss, but I think prisons are probably full of people that lost someone and just didn’t learn how to control their emotions or didn’t learn how to heal.”
He talks of his sadness that Jade wasn’t there to see 23-year-old Bobby’s recent catwalk show in Milan.
He said: “She just would have been cheering and clapping and shouting out. You wouldn’t have been able to have stopped her because of the immeasurable pride that she would have had. And it’s just one of the most unfair things in life when you think what was taken away from her and also what was taken away from them.”
Jeff acknowledged that while there were still significant difficulties for the family to overcome, he hoped they would be a “positive” outcome.
He said: “So we’re in a difficult situation at the moment where there’s a lot for us to work through together. And I hope that next time that we speak that there’ll be some kind of positive conclusion that means that we can all try and work together.”
Jeff, who has spent more than a decade working with bereaved people as a life coach, also spoke about his desire to help other men confront their difficulties.
He added: “People need to know that there are outlets and pathways other than numbing with substances or running from it or avoiding it.”
You can watch and listen to the full episode of Jeff Brazier talking to Matt Willis on On The Mend on Spotify, YouTube and where you get your podcasts
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