Perkins tells of tumour horror

FORMER Great British Bake Off host Sue Perkins has told how she “destroyed my life from the inside out” after being diagnosed with a brain tumour.

The presenter, 47, revealed the tumour two years ago, saying “it’s benign”.

But she has now told BBC Radio 4 show Desert Island Discs of the “epic destruction” it had on her life.

Perkins, who discovered the condition when she undertook blood tests as part of TV show The Supersizers, said it caused her to “walk out of my life”.

The star, who shot to fame presenting the Great British Bake Off, said she found out about it while presenting the BBC show, in which she ate unusual food and took medical tests to see what impact the diet had on her. Perkins said: “In this small, very clinical white side-room, this woman said ‘your bloods are very awry and you have a brain tumour’.

“It’s only really now that I consider the epic destruction this tiny little rice-shaped thing in my pituitary gland caused.”

Perkins said she responded to the diagnosis by saying “’thank you very much’ ... I didn’t want to know...”

When her specialist told her that she could not have children, “it was the beginning of a very, very dark time.

“I got diagnosed when I was 38. By the time I was 40, I had literally destroyed my life from the inside out,” she told Kirsty Young.

“It was only six months ago when I went for a second opinion and started medication.

“I’ll never understand how I did some of the things that I did,” the comedian said.

“I walked out of my life. ended a relationship.

“And it’s taken this time to look at the wreckage and ... to say sorry and make amends and ... to be better.”

Perkins, now in a relationship with Naked Attraction presenter Anna Richardson, revealed that her father – who later died – was diagnosed with a non-benign terminal tumour.

“I think the best thing I can do to honour him is to get myself sorted,” she said.

Perkins also told the Radio 4 show that she wanted to “throw up” when she realised she was gay. She also drank too much in her twenties to overcome her shyness.

“I I got a stomach ulcer,” she said.

Desert Island Discs is on BBC Radio 4 today at 11.15am I