Jeff Brazier admits Mother's Day "knocked the wind out of" son Freddy on 'Celebrity Race Across The World’.
Jeff Brazier says he and Bobby struggled on Mother's Day this year
The ‘This Morning’ star admitted that he and his 20-year-old son - who he shared with late reality star Jade Goody - struggled while filming the BBC One travel competition show when the annual celebration of mums rolled around, after his mother died in 2009 aged 27 from cervical cancer.
The 45-year-old television personality said: “The biggest challenge was missing Mother's Day. It really brought a different perspective to the race.
"It wasn't about what route to go. It wasn't necessarily about what to experience either. It was just what we could do that was going to feel fitting or was going to feel enough.
"You feel a lot of pressure as a parent to come up with some kind of solution and you're relying on Brazil a little bit, relying on places you've never been to before and the bus and the infrastructure. But it's just difficult.
"The Race is difficult enough as it is and then you throw that, as a consideration, into the mix. It took Fred the rest of the leg to settle. That was a leg and a half.”
Jeff - who also had ‘EastEnders’ star Bobby Brazier, 21, with the late star - admitted their dynamic “didn’t stop shifting” as they made their way across South America and they really worked well as team trying to beat Kelly Brook, Scott Mills and others.
He explained: “Our relationship didn't stop shifting. There was a real kind of taking ownership and responsibility on Freddy’s part. The leg where we had to deal with Mother's Day knocked the wind out of him a little bit and then he came back and he sort of wanted to be a passenger for a little bit.
"There was a lot of ebb and flow. But I'm proud that it was at least dictated by Fred. It would have been good, in hindsight, if the whole thing was just about Freddy coming of age and making all the decisions, but sometimes he didn't want that. The way that we worked as a team definitely ebbed and flowed.”
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