Bereaved Sky Sports presenter to quit to look after son

Sky Sports presenter Simon Thomas is leaving his job to focus on his son Ethan, following the death of his wife last year.

In a blog post on his site, A Grief Shared, Thomas said he had to put the needs of his son first after his wife Gemma died suddenly of blood cancer in November.

“On that first morning after Gemma went, I remember Ethan coming up to me in the lounge and through his tears he said these words: 'Daddy, you know every weekend you go away and do the football, and I spend the weekend with Mummy? What do I do now?' And they have stuck with me ever since,” he wrote.

He thanked his colleagues at Sky for their support. “When I first became unwell, not only did they give me the time off to get better; they wanted to understand,” he said. “Initially, I was fearful of talking to them about mental health. I shouldn’t have been. Every step of the way, they supported me, gave me the space to try and get better, and wanted to understand what I was going through – and this has carried on through these hugely painful last five months.”