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Jamie Theakston To Return To Work After Being Told He’s Now Cancer-Free

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Jamie Theakston has confirmed he’s returning to broadcasting after undergoing surgery for cancer.

Towards the end of last year, the presenter announced he’d be taking an extended break from his slot on Heart Breakfast after being told he had stage one laryngeal cancer.

During Friday’s show, he surprised listeners when he returned to the studio, and explained: “Today is the four-month anniversary of my cancer diagnosis. So it’s been four months, and I’ve had enough of hospitals and operations, and it’s just lovely to be back, and I’ve got some news for you. Because I can tell you that as of today, I’m cancer free.”

Speaking to his usual co-host Amanda Holden and stand-in Jason King, Jamie admitted that his initial diagnosis came as “an enormous shock”.

“I was fully intended to be told that I had a sore throat. And when I was told, ‘oh, it’s probably cancer,’ just, literally, I just didn’t even know what to say,” he recalled. “I mean, it just blew my mind.

“And so then it’s all about statistics. So the first is, ‘well, you’ll have a one in 10 chance you won’t survive it.’ And you kind of go, ‘oh okay, I’ll take that.’ And then I had to do several surgeries.

“The first surgery wasn’t as successful as we hoped, had a second surgery, and then a third surgery, and each time, I was doing more and more damage to my vocal cords. So, in actual fact, by the third one, they said, ‘well, look, you’ve got a one in six chance you might not be able to talk again’.”

Fortunately, Jamie has now been told he is cancer-free, and will return to work on a permanent basis from Monday onwards.

Jamie said: “Everyone has been so supportive. It’s been unbelievable and it’s just blown me away. So, I wanted to thank everyone who sent me messages.

“Every single person I’ve ever met or known has been in touch. People I’ve forgotten all about have been in touch. So that has just been amazing.”

Amanda Holden and Jamie Theakston were reunited on Friday morning
Amanda Holden and Jamie Theakston were reunited on Friday morning

Praising guest presenter Jason, Jamie added: “You’ve done such an amazing job. You came in at the last minute, and I know what an upheaval it is.

“You’ve got a young family, and literally, you were told, ‘oh, you’ve got to come in tomorrow,’ and then from then on, you didn’t know how long you were going to do it for – one month, then two months, and then it was three months. And you’ve done such a fantastic job.”

Jamie discovered he had cancer after having surgery on his vocal cords.

“As you know, I recently had an operation to remove a lesion from my vocal cords,” he wrote on Instagram in September.

“The biopsy has identified this as stage one laryngeal cancer. So, I have cancer – but cancer doesn’t have me.”

Initially, Jamie said he’d hoped to return to work in October, though the recovery process ended up taking several months.

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Graham Norton Recalls This Epic TV Blunder Kicked Off His First Ever Live Broadcast

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Graham Norton has admitted that his early forays into live presenting didn’t get off to the strongest of starts.

While the Irish presenter has now fronted everything from the Eurovision Song Contest and the Children In Need telethon to the BBC’s musical theatre talent searches like Over The Rainbow and Any Dream Will Do, his first live broadcast was on the oft-forgotten, short-lived Strictly Dance Fever, which served as a halfway point between The X Factor and Strictly Come Dancing.

The show was Graham’s first project with the BBC after they poached him from Channel 4, where he’d had big success with his talk shows V Graham Norton and So Graham Norton.

And episode one… well, let’s just say it had a bumpy start.

Graham recalled to Late Night With Seth Meyers: “It was my very first live show and I was hosting a dancing competition – don’t ask.

“So we’re standing in the studio, waiting to go live, the audience are there, the dancers are primed, and suddenly there’s a newsflash – the Pope had died.”

He continued: “I’m on stage, and they’re in my ear, and the newsflash is going on, there’s a guy live from Rome… and they’re going, ‘OK, when we come out of the opening titles sequence, there’ll be no applause’, and I’m going ‘OK’.

“And then, they go, ‘no, there will be applause, but no cheering’. ‘OK’. ‘When you read the opening thing, emphasise the tension of the competition, but not the excitement’… anyway, what they forgot was that when the newsflash ended, it goes to a black screen… and then that merged into our opening credits.”

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However, Graham noted that what the team had forgotten was that the show’s opening sequence also began with a black screen “onto which walked me, in a white suit, approaching a big switch”, which he then pushed “signalling bumping dance music and neon signs exploding”.

“It was like I just said to the nation, ‘yeah, the Pope’s dead… who cares! Let’s dance!’,” he quipped.

Graham, of course, is now best known as the host of his own Friday night talk show, which has now been running on the BBC for almost 20 years.

Elsewhere during his Seth Meyers interview, the star opened up about the one A-lister whose anecdote on the Graham Norton Show had to be cut, and the unexpected origins of his iconic “big red chair”.

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