TV’s Bill on life after his cancer treatment
BROADCASTER Bill Turnbull says he is keeping his cancer at bay… and is embracing having having hair again since finishing chemo.
Bill, 63, was on steroids last year after having several rounds of the therapy.
He said: “I’ve had a holiday from it now for 10 months. I still have bad days, but I get through.
“My hair has grown back and I’m letting my hair grow long just to celebrate. I know I looked awful last year.
“I saw pictures of myself and I was, ‘Oh Lord, that was just ghastly’. I was in the middle of the treatment.”
The Classic FM host was speaking at the Chelsea Flower Show, where he met up with weather presenter Carol Kirkwood, his old BBC Breakfast colleague. In November 2017, he was diagnosed with incurable prostate cancer, which had spread to his pelvis, hips, legs and spine.
He said: “‘I’m keeping it at bay’ is the best way to put it. The first prognosis I got was 10 years, then I went to a different doctor and he said 12 to 14, but his ambition was to get me to 80.
“But the boundary keeps getting pushed back. You can never tell, but looking at the horizon, the horizon is getting further away with treatments and stuff, so you have to stay positive.”
He admits sometimes that can be difficult. He said: “This is the weird thing. People say, ‘You look so well’. I say, ‘I wish someone would tell my cancer that’. It’s still in there going, ‘We’re going to get him, we’re going to get him!’ But you still have to live life to the full, every day.”
He is on a hormone treatment, which has side effects. He said: “I get hot flushes, menopause symptoms. Mine won’t last for a bit, my symptoms will go on forever. So that’s a lot of fun.” Bill, who married Sarah McCombie in 1988 and has three children, admitted having developed coping mechanisms. He said: “I try to meditate. I try various things. You need a shoulder a cry on. “And you do cry. I’ve got a great shoulder to cry on – my wife is a brilliant shoulder to cry on. She’s got wet shoulders.”
He is making a film about his condition. He said: “We’re making a documentary for Channel 4 which should come out in autumn about ‘the journey’. Not the battle, you can’t fight cancer, you just have to deal with it.”
He praised friends and family for helping him cope. He said: “They’ve been amazing and got me through. Sometimes you have bad days, but mostly there are good days.”
Comic Stephen Fry has also spoken of being diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2018, and Bill said: “What is really nice is that people write, saying, ‘Thank you for saving my husband’s life’ or ‘my life’.
“They have got tested as a result of what Stephen Fry said and what I’ve said and they found out they have prostate cancer, got treatment and are OK.
“That is such a huge consolation. There are people who are going to be OK because of what they read about me.”