The late Sir Terry Pratchett stars in the first national TV campaign by Alzheimer’s Research UK – just months after the Discworld author died from the disease.

The TV ad campaign, which aired in the final of Britain’s Got Talent on Sunday night, also features famous faces including Hollywood actor and charity ambassador Seth Rogen, James Nesbitt, choreographer Arlene Phillips, Dame Joan Bakewell and broadcaster Katie Derham.

Rogen, whose mother-in-law is living with early-onset Alzheimer’s, said that tackling the disease is a global challenge.

“It doesn’t respect ethnicity or wealth,” he said. “And with a rapidly ageing global population, it’s one of our biggest threats. Alzheimer’s Research UK’s campaign is a bit of a wake-up call to the scale of the challenge, but also a call to arms for us to back research to beat it.”.

Novelist Valerie Blumenthal, who is living with the same rare form of Alzheimer’s that took Pratchett’s life in March, said: “I became an expert at bluffing to my friends and family to cover up why I no longer did the things I enjoyed so much, like playing the piano, reading and painting.

“When Sir Terry Pratchett passed away earlier this year it brought home the condition to me. This campaign will help people to accept that Alzheimer’s is a disease, and a disease we can tame. We need to fight the perception that dementia is an inevitability, and recognise that research is our weapon against it.”

This is the first time in Alzheimer Research UK’s 21-year history that it has launched a national advertising campaign. The campaign will run on TV and in cinemas across the UK throughout June.

The advertisement has been created using archive footage from news and television programming from the past 30 years, created by ad agency AIS and edited by Sam Sneade.

Former Strictly Come Dancing judge Phillips, who cared for her father who was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, said: “Dementia is not something we have to accept, it’s brought on by diseases that our scientists can beat if we all get behind them.

“We shouldn’t have to just cope with dementia, we should be able to defeat it. Research is the answer, it gives us hope, and it will bring the breakthroughs that will change the future of dementia.”

The TV ad is next scheduled to air during Emmerdale on Monday night.