Jon Holmes: “How Stephen Fry saved my life”
The 57-year-old comedian and presenter opens up about his prostate cancer diagnosis and why he wants men to talk about health more.
The 57-year-old comedian and presenter opens up about his prostate cancer diagnosis and why he wants men to talk about health more.
It’s been three years since Jon Holmes was given a diagnosis of prostate cancer during a routine check-up at the doctors. Despite not really having any symptoms, he decided to get himself checked out after seeing continuous adverts on his social media. Although the treatment he went through was “grim” and “undignified” at times, the 57-year-old comedian and radio host will be forever grateful for phoning the doctors and getting that test.
Although he had his prostate removed, Holmes’ cancer still returned – “I was unaware the cancer could come back after your prostate is no longer there” , but he continues to remain positive and is currently healthy. His podcast, Jon Holmes Says The C-Word, sees him chat to other men who have been diagnosed and share funny, heartbreaking, honest and often absurd stories about their treatment and recovery.
He wants to keep raising awareness as men generally remain reluctant to talk about their health. To that end, he has teamed up with cancer care service provider GenesisCare to help prostate cancer patients fully understand their treatment options at the time of diagnosis.
We caught up with the father-of-two to discuss his shock at being diagnosed, why he wants to get men to open up more and how Sir Stephen Fry helped save his life.
They certainly do in my circles. Before it happened to me, it would not have been spoken about down the pub with my bloke friends, because that’s not what we do, right? But certainly since I had to tell them which club I was joining, they’ve all been tested so there’s certainly more openness.
And I think wider, just from feedback from the podcast series as well, I get people say, “I’ve just been diagnosed and I’m listening to your podcast in tandem with the conveyor belt bits that you have to go through.”
And I’m a minor fish in this pond but when big names like Chris Hoy and King Charles are being diagnosed people are more likely to get checked out and talk about it. I don’t think 10 years ago we would’ve heard about the King’s diagnosis. The reason it was called the C word is because nobody wanted to say the word. And you’re only going back to, what, the 1950s or 1960s for that, I think.
My approach in life is to do anything with humour – that’s my job so I only have one skill set so I had to apply it to that. I think that really broke down a few barriers. I am laughing at this because of the preposterous nature of the indignity of what we all have to go through, from the biopsy to the first test to everything in between.
It’s all horrific, but God, it’s funny. I mean, if you don’t laugh at it, what are you going to do? Everything that happened, I was just thinking, “Well this is content”.
Men just traditionally, for whatever reason, don’t want to or feel that they can’t, which is why I’m still talking about it now as part of this campaign. We want more people to be willing to just go on record and talk about the bits that don’t work or did work and have stopped working and now work again. All that embarrassing stuff.
But it’s mostly embarrassing for men, I think, talking about it. And that’s part of the reason for it. So, if I can do a tiny bit to help get the stigma out of the way, I’m more than happy to do it.
We’ve launched a quizcast called The Big C QuizCast, which has been designed to help support prostate cancer patients and their families. The whole point of GenesisCare’s Mind The Gap campaign is that there is a knowledge gap about what treatment and help is available after diagnosis and I fell into it. Many men do, I think.
And this is a way to say, “Look, there’s a ladder out of this knowledge gap now and it’s this”. So, get on the web, get on to that website because that will guide you through.
No, the only reason I called the GP was that my social media algorithms just kept coming up with images of Stephen Fry, saying, “Are you over 50? You should go for a prostate cancer test”. I kept seeing it so I thought it must be a screening programme.
And I know Stephen, I’ve worked with him over the years and knew he had prostate cancer so I eventually called my doctor as men over 50 are susceptible.
They went through a checklist and I didn’t tick any of the boxes because I’m adopted – I didn’t know my family history, so they tested me. So, if I hadn’t been adopted, which I find really weird, I would have prostate cancer now and not even know about it. But seeing Stephen Fry is what saved me!
When I was diagnosed, I was in a hotel room because I was working away and I saw the oncologist over Zoom. It was so overwhelming and I want people to know what is out there to help them. GenesisCare offer MRI-guided SABR – the NHS does too for certain cases so just ask. It is an advanced, highly precise form of radiotherapy that offers a non-invasive alternative to surgery and can be completed in just five treatment sessions. It can significantly reduce the treatment burden for suitable patients.
We got the guy who is behind the physics of this new MRI SABR machine to play, and then two people who’ve been through it. It’s 15 minutes and there’s some quite silly questions at times – they talk through their experiences, but in a kind of a multiple-choice format with me asking them silly things.
Again, it’s about addressing the knowledge gap. There are statistics in the quiz, but men know more about buying a car than they do about their own prostates and what the options are, which is sort of understandable, but sort of weird at the same time. So, yeah, that’s what that’s what it’s for. It’s addressing this knowledge gap.
Find out more about Mind The Gap and how to navigate your prostate cancer treatment pathway. Watch The Big C Quizcast on YouTube.
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