In 2007 Eric Idle was writing Death: The Musical, in which the protagonist, a man writing a musical about death, discovers he is dying. Idle approached his trusted doctor to ask about the quickest way to kill off this character. “Easy,” his doctor replied. “Pancreatic cancer.” Twelve years later it was that same doctor who was tasked with informing the Monty Python star that he – the man who wrote the musical about a man with pancreatic cancer writing a musical about death – had pancreatic cancer. In the face of his chilling diagnosis, Idle burst out laughing.
Idle tells this bizarre life-imitating-art tale in the new BBC Radio 4 show Jon Holmes Says the C-Word, a weekly discussion of all the things that can come with a cancer diagnosis. Holmes, a British writer and broadcaster, was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2023. He immediately looked for something that would “demystify the whole process ... straight-talking accounts to remind me that there were other people going through the same thing, other people’s stories offering support, advice and, yes, humour that would basically shine a great big human light into what can be a pretty dark time.”
One of the hurdles, says Holmes, is that men don’t tend to talk openly about “the preposterous indignity” of dealing with cancer. So Holmes decided he would, and with other men who had been through it. That’s where the likes of Idle – who beat the odds and survived pancreatic cancer in large part due to early detection – come in. But the first episode kicks off with another English comedy legend, Stephen Fry.
Fry talks about how he first found out about his cancer, when he was getting the industry-standard medical once-over to clear him for insurance for a film. Though he had no symptoms, high levels of PSA, or prostate-specific antigens, were noted. He returned for more tests and ultimately was diagnosed with, and treated for, prostate cancer. And it was Fry’s going public with his experience that led Holmes to check in with his doctor about checking his own levels – the Stephen Fry effect, as the doctor called it – resulting in his own diagnosis.
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Each guest on this entertaining series had a different departure point for their so-called cancer journey – nerve pain, a routine blood test, priapism, a lump on the neck, enlarging testicles – but find common ground and a kind of brotherhood in facing off against the same insidious foe.
Episode one focuses on how they came to their diagnosis, the card that gave them membership into this least desirable club. Episode two takes in the tedious, humiliating administrative hell that comes with that diagnosis: the appointments and procedures and indignities and medical red tape that must be navigated. These wide-ranging and deeply personal stories take us to often unexpected and intimate places: descriptions of the colon as “pink and coral-like, and rather lovely”; jokes about misconstrued tissue placement. It’s funny and bleak and gritty and real, thanks to candid conversations about these men’s most intimate dysfunctions and despairs.
Holmes brings a stoic humour to the topic, often scripted but always with a service to the listener, whether they’re a cancer sufferer who can relate to various humiliations or they know someone who has cancer. This is important, destigmatising stuff, informing the listener of early signals to note, the importance of screening and the need to see a doctor when something feels off. But Jon Holmes Says the C-Word is also bright and warm, entertaining us without minimising the seriousness and suffering inherent in its subject. Cancer’s no joke, but Holmes, Idle, Fry et al find the funny in it too. If you didn’t laugh, after all.
