Konnie Huq

Lots of people will give you a wide berth because they don’t know how to act, which isn’t helpful.  

Born in Hammersmith in 1975 to parents who emigrated from Bangladesh in the 1980s, Konnie Huq has become a household name in the UK thanks to presenting jobs on shows like Blue Peter and The Xtra Factor. In recent years, she’s released a handful of children’s books and has collaborated with her husband, Charlie Brooker, on his award-winning series, Black Mirror.

Konnie lost her father in 2014, six years after he was diagnosed with prostate cancer. His death triggered her mother’s early-onset dementia, which led to her own death just a few years later. Here, she discusses the impact that the loss of her parents has had on her, from the significance of receiving flowers as a sympathy gift, to understanding how best to approach the topic of death with the recently bereaved.

Once you lose a parent, or both parents in my case, people will tip-toe around you and everyone else starts to have a sense-of-humour bypass because they’re worried about you, but humour is a really good coping mechanism and you don’t want to be mourning the whole time.