Paul Sinha issues update on health after Parkinson's diagnosis
The Chase star Paul Sinha has admitted he owes his Parkinson's diagnosis to an appearance on Taskmaster. The 54-year-old was diagnosed with the neurological condition in 2019 but before that, it had been missed by doctors for some time.
However, when he went for a scheduled second appointment with his consultant the medic admitted he had spotted symptoms of the condition after watching him on the Channel 4 show.
"I went to see him and he said 'I've just been watching you on Taskmaster, I wish I'd known. I would have diagnosed you far quicker,'" Paul told the Full Disclosure podcast.
"There were telltale signs in the way I adjust and move that he said were diagnostic," Paul explained.
Back to the Future star Michael J Fox is possibly the most high-profile sufferer of the condition, which the NHS describes as a condition in which parts of the brain become progressively damaged over many years. The main symptoms are involuntary shaking of parts of the body, the slowing of movement and stiff, inflexible muscles.
In his 2024 tell-all memoir, One Sinha Lifetime: Comedy, disaster and one man's quest for happiness, the TV quizzer admitted the penny "finally dropped" about his condition when he googled one of his symptoms.
He wrote he was in a taxi travelling to a hotel when he made the devastating discovery before immediately telling his fiancé the news.
"In the taxi to the hotel, I impulsively decided to do something that I should have done many months ago. I switched my phone on and I googled 'parkinsons + frozen shoulder'.
"When I saw the results the penny finally dropped. I turned to my fiancé. 'I've got Parkinson's," he revealed in the tome.
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Despite having the diagnosis confirmed Paul has continued to perform stand up and work on The Chase.
"I feel that I’ve shown in the past three or four years that you can do it whilst having Parkinson’s," he told the podcast.
"It's a good way of measuring my brain's ability and function. I've always said that if I felt that the ability was going down, I'd call it myself, and I still stand by that. But it's definitely not going down, so that's fine."
