Alagiah: My cancer has spread to my lungs
... but newsreader says condition is not terminal
‘I’m now on the grown-up stuff’
BBC newsreader George Alagiah has revealed that his bowel cancer has spread to his lungs.
The presenter, 64, said a checkup for coronavirus, which he had a mild case of in March, had uncovered the bad news.
But he said his condition was not ‘chronic’ or ‘terminal’ and it was not time to set his affairs in order.
Alagiah first received treatment in 2014 for bowel cancer which had spread to his liver and lymph nodes, but the disease returned three years later.
He recovered from Covid earlier this year, having spoken about his battle with the two diseases in a
BBC News interview, but tests in April showed his cancer had spread. Alagiah said he had kept the latest development secret, telling only his editor.
‘My doctors have never used the word “chronic” or “cure” about my cancer,’ he said. ‘They’ve never used the word “terminal” either.
‘I’ve always said to my oncologist, “Tell me when I need to sort my affairs out”, and he’s not told me that, but what he did tell me is that the cancer is now in a third organ. It is in my lungs.’
He added: ‘I haven’t told anybody. My editor knows... but that is the way it is. I said to my doctor, “You’re going to have to do the worrying for me”.
‘I don’t want to fill my mind with worry. I just know that he’s a clever guy, doing everything he can.’
Alagiah, who has been the BBC
News at Six presenter since 2007, said his chemotherapy has increased as a result of the cancer spreading. After the low dose he was previously on, he said he was now ‘on the old-fashioned stuff, the grown-up stuff’.
The father of two also told how his wife Frances Robathan had caught coronavirus shortly after he did.
While his symptoms were mild, hers were more severe. He told The Times: ‘My wife got it pretty badly. She didn’t go into hospital, but she had the worst of it.’
Last month Alagiah said his cancer diagnosis helped bring his family together, while the coronavirus has ‘kept us apart’.
Speaking on Radio 4’s Today Programme, he said: ‘This coronavirus has turned things upside down, we feel threatened and we want to come together but no, we’ve had to stay apart.
‘It reminds me of the day – some six years ago now – when I found out I was sick, very sick.
‘By the time the cancer diagnosis came through, I was in, well, “sort your affairs out” territory. I told my wife and family first and then our friends and we came together.
‘In my vulnerability we found an intensity of love that we’d never expressed before. Being closer to the last day has brought a richness to each and every day.
‘God knows I wish I’d never had cancer but I’m not sure I would give these past six years back.’
In the March interview in which he revealed his Covid diagnosis, he told his colleague Sophie Raworth how dealing with cancer had helped him get through the ordeal.
He said: ‘In some ways, I think that those of us living with cancer are stronger because we kind of know what it is like to go into something where the outcomes are uncertain.’