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The wife of the British TV presenter Michael Mosley confirmed the “devastating” news that her husband had been found dead on the Greek island of Symi.
Dr Clare Bailey said she and the couple’s four children were taking comfort in the fact he had “almost made it” after his body was found near a seaside resort on Sunday.
“We take solace in the fact that he almost made it. He made an incredible climb, took the wrong route and collapsed where he could not be easily seen by the extensive search team.
Moseley, 67, went missing after going for a walk around the island on Wednesday, sparking an intense five-day search.
Confirming it had been found, Bailey said he didn’t “know where to start”.
In a statement, she said: “It is devastating to lose Michael, my wonderful, funny, kind and brilliant husband. We had an incredibly happy life together. We loved each other very much and were so happy together.”
Bailey, who met Moseley in medical school, said she was “incredibly proud” of the couple’s children and their resilience and support. “My family and I have received great comfort from the outpouring of love from people all over the world. It is clear that Michael meant an enormous amount to so many of you,” she said.
She added that Moseley – who has repeatedly tested scientific theories on his own body – was an adventurous person, which was “part of what made him so special”.
She added: “We are so grateful to the extraordinary people of Simi who worked tirelessly to help find him. Some of these people on the island, who had never even heard of Michael, worked from dawn to dusk, unsolicited. We are also very grateful to the press, who treated us with great respect.
“I feel so blessed to have our children and my amazing friends. Most of all, I feel so lucky to have had this life with Michael.
On the fifth day of what turned into an increasingly frantic hunt, Moseley was discovered by a cameraman working with state broadcaster ERT.
His body was found on rocky terrain near a fence, next to a small resort only accessible by boat or on foot. The resort is on the opposite side of the bay from where he left his wife and friends and about 30 minutes’ walk from Paddy, where he was last seen.
Extreme weather warnings were in place this week in Simi, where temperatures reached above 40C (104F) in the afternoon.
“It’s clear from his watch and his clothes that this is Dr. Mosley,” police spokeswoman Constantina Dimoglu said. It was unclear how long he had been dead, Dimoglu said. A police source told BBC News that the deceased had been dead “for several days”.
A news camera crew said they spotted the body from a boat in the bay of Agia Marina after zooming in on the image they captured.
“We found it [from a boat] when we entered the bay of Agia Marina,” said ERT journalist Aristides Miaoulis, who described how when the team’s camera operator looked back at his footage, he noticed “something strange”.
“Looking back at the material he had, he saw something strange near a fence, about 50 meters from the sea, and then we could see after zooming in that it was this guy because his watch was shining [in the sun].”
The island’s mayor, who was with the media team, said 200 people had previously searched the site and yet Mosley had not been found. The Greek Coast Guard was immediately called to the area and attached.
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The discovery was made on a day when search teams turned their attention to a set of caves belonging to a rocky outcrop near Agia Marina beach. The images, which were deliberately blurred, showed the remains found on rocky ground next to a chain-link fence near the seaside resort.
The father-of-four is believed to have walked from St Nicholas Beach to the port of Simi where he was staying at a house with friends, a walk of just over 2 miles.
At around 14:00 local time (12:00 BST) on Sunday, firefighters arrived at the marina by boat and carried an orange stretcher and a large black bag to where the body was found; others in civilian clothes and carrying briefcases climbed the rocky hill, PA Media reported.
Five firefighters left the island by boat with the body on a stretcher around 2:45 p.m. local time. On Saturday, an emergency services helicopter spent hours flying over the mountainous search site for Symi between Pedi Bay and Agia Marina.
The discovery of the body came amid a massive air, land and sea operation to find the TV presenter and health guru who popularized intermittent fasting and created the 5:2 diet.
Moseley went hiking from St Nicholas Beach at 1.30pm local time on Wednesday, en route to the port town of Symi, when he disappeared outside the coastal village of Pedy.
video surveillance Moseley images taken about 20 minutes after he was last seen, shows him shielding himself from the brutal sun under an umbrella.
His wife raised the alarm at 7.30pm after he failed to return to the house where the couple were staying with British friends who live part of the year on the island and where Mosley had left his mobile phone. A search and rescue operation was launched to find Moseley, who is best known for his appearances on The One Show and This Morning. Bailey was later joined by the couple’s grown children on the island.
The search included police, firefighters, coastguards, drones, helicopters, divers and a specially trained tracking dog flown in from Athens. It was one of the largest operations of its kind in our memory. Investigators had initially focused their search on the cliff top path that Moseley had taken from the beach on his way to Paddy.
Mosley, a columnist for the Daily Mail, has made a number of documentaries on diet and exercise, including the Channel 4 show Michael Mosley: Who Made Britain Fat? He was also part of the BBC series Trust Me, I’m a Doctor.
He lived with tapeworms in his intestines for six weeks for the documentary Infested! BBC Four’s Life with Parasites.
Moseley is also credited with the growing popularity of the 5:2 diet, which involves fasting for two days a week to lose weight. He was named Medical Journalist of the Year by the British Medical Association in 1995.
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