The man with the seven second memory.

This film follows on from a Channel Four film of 1986 entitled 'Prisoner of Consciousness.' Clive Wearing was a talented musician until he got struck down by a virus in 1985. At first his GP thought he had flu but as his fever and neurological symptoms escalated he was rushed to hospital and found to be suffering from the herpes simplex virus attacking his brain, leading to encephalitis and eventually causing massive brain damage which left him with one of the worst cases of amnesia in the world. His memory lasts for seven seconds and then goes completely blank so he lives his life now in a secure brain unit, describing his state as 'perfectly like death' with 'no thoughts, no memories, nothing at all.' His wife Deborah and three children talk about how life has been over the last twenty years with a husband / father who can't read a book watch a film or even go for a walk.