Rachael Bland
BBC broadcaster who won hearts and minds when she chronicled her treatment for breast cancer
RACHAEL BLAND, who has died aged 40, was a broadcaster who became an award-winning blogger and podcaster after she was diagnosed with breast cancer. On her blog Big C Little Me, she chronicled her treatment with candid good humour as well as video-blogging (vlogging) about her radiotherapy and conducting live Facebook chemotherapy sessions. She eschewed flowery language, preferring “died” to “passed away”.
Her hugely popular podcast You, Me and the Big C also won awards for Rachael Bland and her co-presenters, Deborah James, a former deputy head teacher being treated for bowel cancer, and the lifestyle blogger Lauren Mahon, who had successfully completed treatment for breast cancer. Likened by one critic to “listening to three raucous friends in the pub”, it rode high in the itunes charts, rising to No1 when she announced that she had only days to live.
With a journalist’s curiosity and an eye for a lively phrase and a telling detail, she covered topics from anxiety to the effects of chemotherapy, questions of fertility and coping strategies; and she wrote bravely and with unaffected frankness about her own experiences – such as the car accident when she was just “a naive teenager from deepest darkest Wales” that left her with post-traumatic stress disorder at a time when she felt too shy to voice her feelings.
She was born Rachael Rebecca Hodges at Creigiau, on the outskirts of Cardiff, on January 21 1978, the daughter of David and Gayna. When she was 16 she was thrown out of the rear seat of a Mini, leaving her with a fractured skull and PTSD. “I was terrified to sleep on my own or without the light on and kept going over and over the details of the accident with anyone who’d listen,” she wrote in her blog.
She wanted to be a broadcaster from an early age, and in 1996 went to the University of Wales to read Journalism, Film and Broadcasting, taking a First. After a diploma in Broadcast Journalism at the University of Central Lancashire in 2001, she began presenting news bulletins on BBC Swindon & Wiltshire.
In 2006 she moved to BBC London, again as a newsreader, for a couple of years. As her career progressed she lost her Welsh accent, but her clear, reassuring and authoritative tones were ideal for news broadcasting. She branched out into television, presenting sports programmes as well as acting as a relief presenter on the BBC News Channel and working for BBC Radio 5 Live, which included reading the news on Richard Bacon’s popular show.
Her sense of humour could spill on to the airwaves. When Radio 5 Live moved to Mediacityuk in Salford Quays, the presenter Tony Livesey was excited to be the first voice from the station’s new home – but as he was about to speak, she slipped into the studio, read the news, winked to Livesey and walked out. The pair often enjoyed an on-air joke together: when she had to read out the name “Randy Baumgardner” the laughter continued for some minutes.
She had the occasional embarrassing moment, as when she was supposed to read out the name of the band The xx, who had won a Mercury Prize. She presumed it was a mistake in her script and told the nation she was unable to announce the winners.
Rachael Bland also began presenting and newsreading on the television magazine programme North West Tonight, and settled with her family in Cheshire. She married Steve Bland, then a producer for Radio 5 Live, in 2013.
A keen sportswoman, Rachael Bland was a show jumper, and competed in marathons and triathlons – including the 2010 London Triathlon, in which she took part to raise money for a breast cancer charity. In 2016 she announced that she had been diagnosed with the disease herself after she had noticed a pain under her arm and consulted her doctor. Blogging about her illness was a natural development: with her husband she had been writing a chatty online account of becoming a parent for Homeserve.com.
She was treated with a trial drug, noting wryly: “So now I have turned lab rat.” She had her eggs – “four frosty little grains of hope” – frozen in the hope that her son, Freddie, would not be an only child.
Treatments such as cognitive behavioural therapy and guided meditations helped her to cope with the anxiety and panic attacks that came with her condition. She was also “a big fan of acupuncture”, as she explained: “I go to my therapist, pour my heart out, she pops a few needles in and I lie in a scented, darkened room for a bit listening to soothing music.” She saw it as “a sort of beauty treatment with spikes”.
She carried on working into her final weeks; with her natural immunity suppressed, she used anti-bacterial wipes to kill off germs in the studio: “I’m waging a one-woman war on dirt and bacteria,” she wrote. The irony was not lost on her that she had grown up “around animals, farms and mud” and had always advocated letting children and germs collide to build up their immune systems.
In April 2018 she was told that her cancer was incurable, news that made her feel “like a grenade with the pin out”. In September she announced on her Twitter account that she had only a few more days to live: “In the words of the legendary Frank S – I’m afraid the time has come my friends. I’m told I’ve only got days. It’s so surreal.”
She had begun writing a memoir, to be titled For Freddie, named for her threeyear-old son. “I’m not scared of dying,” she said. “I only fear for those I leave behind.”
Many plaudits came her way in her final year, among them the Northern Blog Award, in the “Something Different” category, and an O2 Media Award for vlogging and blogging. She is survived by her husband and their son.