Mel Giedroyc has shared that she missed her mother's final moments due to an 'immature' night of drinking that resulted in her phone dying.
The 58-year-old TV presenter was working on a musical in Bristol while her mother, Rosemary, was ill 84 miles away in Oxford. Giedroyc had insisted on taking the role and juggled performances with visits to her mother.
Following a Saturday night performance attended by friends, Giedroyc decided to have drinks. She recalled being the last to leave the theater that night and, after consuming several Bacardi and Diet Cokes, forgot to charge her phone, which she had kept on constantly for months.
Appearing on Elizabeth Day's How To Fail podcast, Giedroyc described the incident as one of her life's "failures." She recounted a conversation with friends who encouraged her to drink despite knowing her mother was dying. "They lined up all these Bacardi and Cokes which is my drink of choice, and I was like guys I haven't been drinking the whole run, I've been going to see mum... But they said, you look stressed, get them down you!" she said.
She woke up the next morning with a severe hangover and realized she had not charged her phone. Upon plugging it in, she heard multiple notifications, which led her to believe her mother had died. "So I just knew. I knew that she died," Giedroyc stated.
She then traveled to the nursing home where her mother passed away and found her family present. "Mum laid out," she recalled. Giedroyc noted that she was teased by her family upon arrival but also that there were tears and laughter. "And I think mum would have probably laughed. The only night I didn't have my phone charged," she added.
Rosemary died peacefully at age 86. The loss came six years after Giedroyc's father, Michael, died at 88. Her father was a Polish aristocrat who had been sent to forced labor in Siberia during World War II. Rosemary had suffered from strokes in her early 50s.
Giedroyc grew up in Leatherhead, Surrey, with her three siblings: Coky, a film and TV director; Kasia, a children's writer; and Miko, a musician.
Meldrew's father met Rosemary through her mother, Astrid, a book illustrator. Giedroyc previously shared that her father instilled in her a drive to achieve and make her mark in life, traits she believes they share, describing themselves as "tough as old boots" with a good sense of humor.