“How can I be Britain’s most evil mother?” Lisa Hayden-Johnson asks in the new Channel 4 documentary series, Love You to Death. It is a rhetorical question; she is not really interested in the answer. “I just did my best,” she responds instead. Over three episodes, Love You to Death unfurls a troubling story of control, abuse, narcissism, delusion and, ultimately, denial.
When Matthew Hayden-Johnson was born prematurely in 2001, his mother Lisa was, understandably, concerned. These concerns turned into a nightmare: Matthew suffered from a range of debilitating intolerances, as well as conditions like diabetes and cystic fibrosis, and needed a stroller to help him walk, earning him the nickname “buggy boy”. But his resilience proved inspiring. He won a Pride of Britain award and met Tony Blair at Downing Street. “We got to do so much that a normal family wouldn’t have got the opportunity to do,” Matthew’s sister, Laura, reflects now. There was just one problem. When doctors looked more closely at Matthew, they couldn’t find evidence that he had any significant medical issues. In fact, it seemed increasingly likely that his doting mother, Lisa, had fabricated everything, endangering her son’s life with invasive medical procedures.
