Rob Rinder has paid tribute to his “beautifully flawed and loving” father David, who has died this week aged 73.
David had been living with a “desperately under-researched” illness known as Lewy body dementia, the TV judge said.
According to the NHS, it is one of the most common types of dementia.
It is an illness that “too few people understand”, Rinder, a barrister and broadcaster who is known for his Judge Rinder courtroom show, wrote.
Rinder, 48, posted a message on Instagram on Thursday saying that he and his father were “very different men”, but Rinder “never once doubted his pride in me”.
Beneath a childhood photo with his father, Rinder remembered him as “a London cabbie and lifelong Spurs supporter”.
He said: “My parents divorced when I was little so I did not grow up with him at home.
“We were very different men. I loved opera and all its drama; he loved Tottenham and cigarettes.
“We both took people as we found them and we both loved women, though in rather different ways. I never once doubted his pride in me.
“When I came out he responded with magnificent indifference: I was still his son, there was nothing else to discuss.”
Rinder has previously discussed coming out in his early 20s, saying he struggled with feelings of shame in his youth, but was ultimately accepted by both his parents.
In the lengthy tribute, Rinder praised the work of charity Jewish Care which looked after his father, and was “a place where dignity and tenderness were practised every day”.
He wrote: “A Jewish man, held in his final days by people of different faiths: a quiet reminder that what is sacred in us is also what we share.
“He died with his family around him, loved and held to the last.
“Funny, beautifully flawed, loving and my dad.”
Rinder concluded the post with a message about Lewy body dementia, saying the condition “took him far too young” and “made the familiar strange and the certain uncertain”.
The TV star became a patron of the Lewy Body Society charity following his father’s diagnosis, and has campaigned to raise awareness of the condition, which he described as “poorly understood, frequently missed and desperately under-researched”.
“Please learn its name, learn its signs and if you can, support the work to change that,” he said.
Waterloo Road star Denise Welch, TV personality Alan Carr and Good Morning Britain presenter Susanna Reid were among the commenters offering their support, alongside former Strictly Come Dancing professional Luba Mushtuk.
Rinder rose to fame presenting ITV’s Judge Rinder, and has since hosted legal shows, travel documentaries, and historical programmes such as Rob And Rylan’s Grand Tour, Amazing Hotels: Life Beyond The Lobby and My Family, The Holocaust And Me.
He is also a bestselling author and was made a Member of the Order of the British Empire in 2020 for services to Holocaust education.
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