Jenni: My £10,000 gastric op was a last ditch bid to get weight down

RADIO presenter Dame Jenni Murray has admitted the £10,000 she forked out to have gastric surgery is “the best money I’ve ever spent”.

TheWoman’s Hour host had three-quarters of her stomach removed privately.

She underwent an operation called a sleeve gastrectomy as a last ditch attempt to bring her weight under control.

She is now down from 24 stone to 14 after “a lifetime of grappling” with her size.

Dame Jenni, 70, said: “I’m not afraid of the word ‘fat’.

“I look at all these people who say let’s celebrate being fat and I think, ‘I’d love to be with you, but I know the damage it can do.’”

The broadcaster revealed she had “tried every diet known to woman or man” but had still struggled to lose weight.

Struggles

She said she was called a “fat cow” by strangers in the street but had not endured the name-calling since the surgery.

In 2006, on the same day her mother died, she was diagnosed with breast cancer, which led to a mastectomy.

Only a few weeks after her follow-up course of chemotherapy her hip began to give her problems and she ended up having a total replacement.

She said: “I just got fatter and fatter.”

The no-nonsense presenter has now written a book about her lifelong struggle with her weight, called Fat Cow, Fat Chance. It charts her bariatric surgery, which saw her shed eight stone in a year.

Speaking in the latest issue of Radio Times, on sale today, she revealed her struggles started in 1968 during her first year at Hull University.

She said her appalled mother told her she looked like a baby elephant after gaining 20lb.

Ashamed, she went to a doctor and was given pills that soon pushed her below an anorexic seven stone.

She admitted at one point later in life she even called the Samaritans. At that time she was spending long periods away from her husband David and their two sons, Charlie and Ed.

She said: “My family was in the Peak District where we lived and I was in London working, three or four nights a week, getting increasingly lonely and depressed. I’d eat pizzas, takeaway. It was stressful and I missed my family something awful.”