Former BBC star and journalist Giles Coren, 55, announces shock cancer diagnosis (Image: Getty)
BBC star and food critic has revealed he has been diagnosed with . The heartbreaking news was announced on Friday, with Giles sharing that he received the diagnosis at exactly 9.30am on Wednesday this week.
He penned in The Times that he decided to get tested a few years ago after celebrities and publicly shared their own diagnoses.
Giles’ prostate-specific antigen test result came back as four, which is seen as “abnormal and facing imminent death”. His doctor informed him that his prostate cancer is a “slow cancer” which “all men get” if they live long enough.
Despite being sent for an MRI scan, he declined a biopsy when the results were inconclusive.
The former presenter of wrote in his column that he eventually agreed to an examination at the Royal Free Hospital in North London. Prior to this, his score had risen to six and then seven, up from the initial four, reports .
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Doctors discovered less than a millimetre of cancer in just three of the 21 samples he provided.
Described as a malignant tumour, his cancer does not require treatment at present but will be monitored for growth. Giles, a renowned columnist, food writer and TV presenter, has been a critic for The Times since 2002 and was honoured as Food and Drink Writer of the Year at the British Press Awards in 2005.
The star was born in Paddington and is the only son of the renowned journalist and humorist Alan Coren and the elder sibling to comedian and television personality . Prostate Cancer UK highlights a sobering statistic: 1 in 8 men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer during their lifetime.
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Giles shared the health update in his column (Image: Getty)
The charity’s website warns: “The cancer mainly affects men over 50, and your risk increases with age. The risk is even higher for black men and men with a family history of prostate cancer.”
In England alone, the figures are stark, with over 44,000 men receiving a prostate cancer diagnosis annually, and tragically, more than 10,000 succumbing to the disease each year.
Presently, there are upwards of 440,000 men living with or beyond prostate cancer across the country.