Matt Preston Reflects on Brothers Impact After Loss

Former MasterChef judge has opened up about the devastating loss of his younger brother, admitting the tragedy continues to influence his life decades later.

Preston, 64, is appearing in the upcoming SBS documentary The Hospital: In the Deep End, where he worked alongside frontline health workers in geriatric, neurology and prostate wards.

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His brother William died in 1988 at just 22 from Sudden Unexpected Death in Epilepsy (SUDEP) – at a time when little was understood about the condition. 

The little-known condition occurs when an otherwise healthy person with epilepsy dies suddenly - not from a seizure-related accident - with no reason for death being found. 

Preston says the stigma around epilepsy back then was frighteningly primitive.

'When my brother got epilepsy, I think it was seen as medieval... like an Exorcist moment,' he told the Herald Sun.

'People were scared of it – it was like 'oh there be demons' kind of stuff. We're probably a lot better than that. 

'Hopefully, we start to look more carefully at the work we do in that area or neurology, which is such an important area. Increasingly it's going to affect more of us.'

More than 200,000 Australians live with epilepsy and more than 170 die each year from the condition, but Preston believes research and funding still has a long way to go.

The loss also pushed his late mother to start a charity that continues today.

Yet it was only recently that the full emotional weight of losing his sibling truly hit home.

'It only hit me this Christmas,' he says. 

'We were sitting around the table with my wife's family and one of my kids – the other two are travelling – and it was like there was that space not just for where my brother could have been but his partner and their kids and the relationship that they would have had with my kids.