Derbyshire will marry – and go on Strictly

BROADCASTER VICTORIA Derbyshire plans to marry her partner of 15 years – and will go on

if she is asked. The BBC journalist was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2015 and underwent a single mastectomy and received both chemotherapy and radiotherapy during her successful treatment for the disease.

Derbyshire was just four months into a new current affairs show on BBC Two and the BBC News Channel when she received the devastating news and decided she should marry her partner Mark Sandell.

It took just five days from suspecting she may have cancer to being diagnosed and she said it was difficult to accept that her own body had turned on her.

“I didn’t want to elevate it on those terms, to be any more scary or terrifying than it is,” Derbyshire told the Cheltenham Literature Festival.

“I was doing everything in my power to diminish it, to normalise it, to compare it to other illnesses, I didn’t want to make it more powerful than it is because, psychologically, how I felt to confront it.

“For me having a cancer diagnosis was a watershed in my life. I can’t say now that I live life to the full because I felt I didn’t not live life to the full before.

“Now I have a perspective I didn’t have before. I am a little bit calmer and I try not to get stressed about things.

“I was really cross when I got the diagnosis. Between noticing something was wrong and being diagnosed was five days.” And should Strictly Come Dancing ever come calling, Derbyshire would not hesitate in appearing.

“If they ever asked me I would say yeah, because actually now I really do know that life is short. So I would just say yes to everything,” she said.