A friend and former colleague of Dr Michael Mosley has described the much-loved health guru as the ‘epitome of what you would aspire to be as a doctor’ – as tributes continue to pour in after his body was found on a Greek island yesterday.
The 67-year-old TV doctor and Mail columnist was with friends at Agios Nikolaos beach on Symi on Wednesday before going missing during a walk by himself to the centre of the island.
Clare Bailey Mosley confirmed a body found on Sunday morning in a rocky area near Agia Marina beach on Symi was her husband, describing the loss as ‘devastating’.
Dr Saleyha Ahsan, Dr Mosley’s co-presenter on Trust Me, I’m A Doctor, paid tribute to her ‘mentor and friend’ and spoke of her regret at not texting him a few weeks ago when she was thinking of him.
On BBC Breakfast, she said: ‘He did incredible things for medicine and for public health in a way that I think that few others have.’
She said he was ‘just the epitome of what you’d aspire to be as a doctor’, adding that he had the ability to bring ‘knowledge and information’ to his patients to help them ‘make positive changes in their life but without being forced to do so’.
‘Michael invited you, there was an invitation that was offered to you, to see a different way of adjusting your lifestyle,’ she added. ‘It was gentle, nothing was thrust upon people, there was no hierarchy. It was so unique.
‘I’ve been reflecting on Michael over the weekend, filled with regret that I didn’t follow through with my plan to send him a text a few weeks ago when it popped into my mind. He just had this ability to teach us so much.’
She also recalled how he put her at ease during her first audition for the BBC series, Trust Me, I’m A Doctor.
‘I will remember Michael as tributes have already said, as a mentor and friend. I began my BBC on screen career with Michael. He was the one I had to do my taster tape with Trust me, I’m A Doctor.
‘When I heard it was going to be with Michael I was terrified. Michael is a legend. But as soon as i arrived at the BBC in London, he put me at ease almost immediately.
‘The way I got to know him on screen, that really personable, accessible character that comes across on TV, that’s exactly how he was in real life and how he was with me.
‘Instantly put me at ease, settled me down, and we got on with the job. I forgot about the cameras and the lights, we just had a really good conversation.’
She continued: ‘I think first of all, he just had this ability to break down the complex and make it accessible. Science can be full of jargon, journal papers that are very dense to read, almost unreadable sometimes. But he was able to get the main messages out of those papers and bring them into public domain so we could all benefit from that research.
‘The other thing I’ve been thinking about is trust. he had this ability to make us trust him – it’s through all sorts of means. Through testing things out on himself first, he tried it out he road tested it, once he road tested it, he took us on the journey with him and shared the results.
‘Then it was up to us if we wanted to continue on that journey with him and many people did.’
She also described her friend as ‘a national treasure’.
Downing Street said Michael Mosley was an ‘extraordinary broadcaster’ who had a ‘huge impact’ on people’s lives.
The Prime Minister’s official spokesman said: ‘The reports from the weekend are heartbreaking and our thoughts are with Dr Michael Mosley’s family, his wife Clare and friends, in what must be deeply sad times.
‘We have seen some incredibly touching tributes which have made clear the huge impact that Dr Mosley had on people and helped to transform people’s lives for the better.
‘He will be known as an extraordinary broadcaster who used his platform to influence and change the way we think about many public health issues.’
Dr Mosley had set off for a hike on Wednesday and was carrying a small bottle of water with him as he managed to climb a steep slope in searing 37C heat from Pedi to the top of the hill overlooking the Agia Marina on the Greek island of Symi.
The doctor was then captured in recently discovered CCTV by a beach restaurant stumbling around for a few minutes before the 67-year-old gingerly picked his way down a slope close to a perimeter fence before then falling out of view.
It is then thought he carried on around the fence before he fell to where his body was found face up just a mere 260ft from a holiday resort.
Dr Mosley is believed to have died just over two hours after leaving his wife from the beach at St Nicholas last Wednesday at 1.30pm.
Police sources ruled out foul play but said it was not possible at this stage to determine how he died. A spokesman for the coroner said: ‘It looks like it was a fall but we need to establish whether he had a medical episode before that and it will take time.’
Questions are now being raised over how the TV doctor’s body lay undiscovered for so long.
On the previous day a search-and-rescue helicopter had circled above the scene.
Dr Mosley was found at around 10.30am yesterday by a restaurant manager at Agia Marina. Ilias Tsavaris, 38, said he was alerted by the restaurant’s owners who had received a call from Symi’s mayor.
‘The mayor had seen something unusual from a water taxi and I was told to go up there and check it out. As I approached, I saw something glinting in the sun – his watch. As I got close I knew it was him. Horrifying.’
Another staff member said: ‘How we missed him is a mystery. He was in distress suffering from exhaustion but nobody saw him. This is heartbreaking.’
Dr Michael Mosley’s wife yesterday paid an emotional tribute to her ‘wonderful, funny, kind and brilliant’ husband after his body was found.
And Dr Chris Van Tulleken, another co-presenter on Trust Me, I’m A Doctor, told Radio 4 Today: ‘Michael invented almost a whole genre of broadcasting that is now so normal that we just accept it. Instead of ivory tower experts who are delivering a voice from up high, Michael was the patient and he also was the guinea pig.
‘He did the incredible work on fasting and diabetes, but we forget this is someone who injected himself with a tape worm and was the first person I saw with a camera put inside him on television.
‘He had such a monopoly on this style about 10-12 years ago that he could have just done everything. But the other thing he did behind the scenes was he created Trust Me I’m a Doctor which deliberate found different, diverse talents to come and work with him.
‘Broadcasting can be cutthroat and competitive, but Michael set this tone of all becoming friends onscreen and off screen. He created this generous idea that we were all in this together.’
Mimi Spencer, who co-authored The Fast Diet with Dr Mosley, paid tribute to him as ‘immediately likeable, genuinely funny’ and said she will ‘miss him terribly’.
Speaking on BBC Radio 4, she said: ‘In person he was very much the sort of figure that you would see on television: immediately likeable, genuinely funny, enthusiastic, he had this innate enthusiasm about life and he was always very generous with his time.
‘He had a brilliant line in tangential anecdote which comes out of his broadcasting as well, that his mind would go down rabbit holes and come out with fantastic snippets of information, and talking to him in person was much like that, you never quite knew where you were going to arrive, but the journey was always fascinating.’
Ms Spencer said she believes the 5:2 intermittent fasting plan and The Fast Diet, which the pair helped popularise, gave Mosley so much joy ‘because it benefited so many people’.
Ms Spencer added: ‘Funnily enough in person, he could also be quite self-deprecating, and actually quite shy. So he never blew his trumpet, he was quite a humble person.
‘I think when he had success, whether it was on the TV or through his books, he was rather thrown by it, he wasn’t expecting it, and that speaks to the man really; that he kept that humility throughout.’
Academic and broadcaster Alice Roberts shared three pictures on social media with Mosley, with whom she first worked on her 2009 TV series Human Journey.
Prof Roberts said the ‘fragility of life is so shocking’ as she recalled working with him and seeing him at the Hay Festival two weeks ago, adding: ‘I can’t believe he’s gone. My thoughts are with his bereaved family.’
The Hay Festival shared black and white photos of Dr Mosley taken during his appearance of the literature and arts festival last month.
Organisers of the annual event in Hay-on-Wye wrote on X: ‘It was a privilege to share his work on our stages. Our thoughts go to his family, friends and colleagues.’
Mosley recorded a special edition of his BBC R4 podcast, just One Thing, on May 25 on stage at the festival with Professor Tanya Byron, a consultant clinical psychologist, broadcaster and author.
Celebrity chef and healthy eating campaigner Jamie Oliver praised the work Mosley had done for public health with his broadcasting and research.
Oliver wrote on Instagram: ‘What a wonderfully sweet, kind and gentle man he was. He did such a lot of good for public health with his TV shows and research.
‘He was a curious investigator, producer and presenter and often changed the conversation around many public health issues for the better.’
Tom Watson, the former deputy leader of the Labour Party, described Mosley, as a ‘hero’.
‘It’s hard to describe how upset I am by this news,’ Mr Watson said on social media.
‘Through courageous, science-based journalism, Michael Mosley has helped thousands of people get well and healthy. I’m one of them.
‘He was a hero to me. He will be deeply missed. My thoughts and prayers are with his family.’
Watson said in an interview after losing around seven stone that Mosley’s The Fast Diet book was part of his weight-loss regime.
Author, TV writer and former doctor Adam Kay said it was ‘desperately sad’ to hear the news.
‘My thoughts with his family – may his memory be a blessing,’ Kay wrote on X.
Physicist and TV presenter Brian Cox said Mosley was a ‘genuinely lovely man’ who helped him when he started his TV career.
‘Tragic news about Michael Mosley. He was such an important figure both on and off screen in the BBC science unit, and as a mentor to many of us when we started out in science presenting’, he wrote on X.
‘And, as many of our colleagues have already said on here, he was a genuinely lovely man. So sorry for his family. RIP Michael.’
This Morning said staff at the ITV programme were ‘heartbroken’ to learn that Mosley, a regular contributor, had died.
In a post on X, the show added: ‘Everyone at This Morning is thinking of Clare, their four children and the rest of Michael’s family and friends at this extremely sad time.’
Angela Rippon hailed Mosley’s contribution to keeping the nation healthy as ‘outstanding’.
‘His Just One Thing broadcasts really did persuade people that by changing just one thing to their daily routine they could make a serious difference to their health and wellbeing,’ she told the PA news agency.
‘His death is such a tragedy. Sincere condolences to his family.’
Broadcaster and materials scientist Professor Mark Miodownik remembered Mosley as a ‘bright spark’ and said he will ‘live on through his influential Just One Thing radio series’.
He said: ‘Science has lost one of its best and most influential communicators.
‘His warmth and connection to the audience was remarkable.
‘When we worked together on the BBC TV series Genius of Invention I was amazed and impressed with his ability to explain topics from steam engines to the electric telegraph.
‘We briefly shared the same taste in shirts and I remember him as a bright spark who although now sadly extinguished, will live on through his influential Just One Thing radio series.’
Calypso Haggett, who was Dr Mosley’s business partner at The Fast 800, said: ‘Michael was our shining light for the whole team at The Fast 800. He and his work motivated us every day and we remain so inspired by his energy, passion, humour, knowledge and kindness.
‘He was a great communicator and had a unique ability to convey complex messages in a simple, easy-to-understand way that encouraged many people to make positive changes in their lives. I know this is how he will be remembered.
‘I had the great privilege of knowing Michael both professionally and personally. He really, truly was one of a kind and will be terribly missed by everyone.
‘Our hearts are very much with Clare and his children during this time. Michael has left an incredible legacy, which I know will live on and energise a continuous movement for better health.’