Prostate cancer now most common Big C in Britain — NHS must do one thing to fight it

got it spot-on this week when he said we blokes are mostly rubbish at getting our health checked out. Especially when it comes to . “Too many men are dying of embarrassment,” he writes. “We tend to ignore pains hoping they’ll just go away, rather than heading to the doctor’s surgery.” There are exceptions, of course. The late Alan Clark MP wrote in his Diaries: “If you think there’s something wrong, run, don’t walk, to the doctor.”

Having said that, Clark would one day succumb to something he always had a nagging instinct would claim him – brain . As I wrote here last month, now that prostate cancer has become the most common “Big C” in Britain, it’s time we had a national screening programme similar to the one for women and breast cancer. But in the absence of that, all men over 50 should present themselves for testing off their own bat.

The problem is that the most commonly available test on the NHS – known as the PSA test – isn’t especially reliable. Too often it returns a negative result, when in fact the man concerned has prostate cancer, sometimes in a relatively advanced form.

That’s the other problem with this cancer. It can be completely symptom-free until its later – and terminal – stages, or the symptoms it does present are vague and difficult to inerpret. Having said that, if a man is having trouble urinating, notices blood in his urine, begins to suffer bone pain, unexpected weight loss or unexplained fevers – follow the Clark doctrine.

But even the dreaded digital examination – a doctor’s finger inserted where the sun don’t shine – can fail to spot a tumour: only about half of the prostate is within reach of the probing digit. If the growth is on the opposite side, it can’t be detected in this way.

Olympic cycling champion Sir Chris Hoy – who recently revealed he has terminal prostate cancer – said last week that a 96 per cent accurate test has now been developed by scientists, and it has his full backing. It is a simple blood and urine test and Sir Chris described it as “a game changer”.

But unless and until it is rolled out into the NHS, the most accurate test available is an MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) scan.

Although I am symptom-free for prostate cancer, I am in my late 60s and statistically at quantifiable risk. So I decided to raid my piggy bank, and two weeks ago I paid for a private MRI scan.

A few hundred quid and sixdays later, the results were in. Negative. Prostate normal. Lymph nodes (which detect and fight cancers) normal.

But I’m lucky. I can afford to pay for a reliable test. So I’m 100% with Rishi when he called for a national screening programme for all men, using the latest techniques to catch prostate cancer early. Not just a game changer. A life-saver.