Mark Steel is a stand-up comedian, TV panellist, author and podcaster
By Thomas Mackintosh
BBC News
Comedian Mark Steel has spoken of his “immense relief” of being cancer-free after being given the all-clear from doctors.
Steel, 63, shared his throat cancer diagnosis last October and told the BBC his treatment has been successful.
He shared his experiences and also praised the staff at University College London Hospital (UCLH).
“They have been astoundingly fantastic,” Steel told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
Previously, Steel revealed he noticed his neck was “looking much bigger than normal” while shaving.
The Have I Got News For You and Mock the Week regular wrote on his website that at first, he thought it was an infection which would go away by itself.
When it didn’t, he sought medical advice, “talking in the blokey way that men often talk to a doctor, saying ‘I’m sure it’s nothing, I’m sorry for coming’.”
He was sent for a biopsy but was later told his results had been lost in transit.
Steel only discovered he had cancer when someone called to arrange another biopsy and told him it was “to see what stage of cancer you have”.
A consultant later told him he had throat cancer that had spread to his lymph gland. But, earlier this week Steel was given the all-clear by doctors.
“On Tuesday morning in the most mundane fashion someone rang from the hospital – I knew they were going to ring – and they said ‘it is all alright’.
“But of course – and I don’t know why – they don’t tell you straight away. So there was about five minutes of ‘how are you, how have you been, what have you been up to?’
“I just stayed calm and they mundanely said it is good news.
Steel – who has a new series of Mark Steel’s in Town coming up on BBC Radio 4 – had successful rounds of chemotherapy and radiotherapy to help treat his cancer.
“I don’t recommend chemotherapy or radiotherapy as recreational drugs. It is quite brutal, but you have to think this is the way they cure it – and it does.
“There were several weeks when everything went. I had no voice at one point and I was just coughing up industrial levels of mucus. barrages of it into a little Tupperware salad bowl.”
The comedian said the chemotherapy room is “one of the most positive places” he has ever been to.
“You just have to get through it,” Steel added. “It is an immense relief and it is luck.
“It is partially the magnificence of the health service and you have to get yourself in the right frame of mind, mostly it is luck.”
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