Restaurant critic and journalist Giles Coren has announced his diagnosis with prostate cancer.
Writing in his column for The Times, the 55-year-old said urology nurses had taken a biopsy before informing him they had found “some cancer” but that “no treatment would be necessary for the moment”.
“In the very week that it was announced on the front page of The Times that prostate cancer is now the commonest cancer in England … I have been diagnosed with it!” he wrote.
#ProstateCancer has become the most common cancer in England.
However, for a disease that affects 1 in 8 men, there’s still no screening programme and outdated NHS guidelines prevent lifesaving conversations with men at highest risk.
➡️ Read more: https://t.co/wvVi5jbS0P pic.twitter.com/KUh0oY1H0R
— Prostate Cancer UK (@ProstateUK) January 28, 2025
Earlier in the week charity Prostate Cancer UK said diagnoses of the disease had overtaken breast cancer in 2022 and 2023, making it England’s most common cancer.
TV star and writer Coren, who is the brother of Only Connect presenter Victoria Coren Mitchell, said his “delightful journey started a couple of years ago”.
“I had to demand, literally demand, a prostate specific antigen (PSA) test along with my annual cholesterol check, because not only is it not mandatory on the NHS but your GP is not even allowed to suggest it unless you have symptoms,” he claimed.
The NHS website says a PSA test checks the level of prostate specific antigen in your blood, with high levels indicating a potential prostate condition.
Coren said the test “came back a bit high” and revealed he had only asked for it because of the work done by celebrities including Stephen Fry, the late Bill Turnbull – and more recently Sir Chris Hoy, who revealed his prostate cancer was terminal in 2024.
After his test presented a score of four Coren was sent for an MRI scan, which he said “came back ‘meh’, not definitely cancer but not definitely not cancer”.
They then offered him a biopsy which he declined until his PSA level went up to seven.
After the procedure one of the urology nurses phoned him to present the results and said they had found cancer – “but less than a millimetre in just three of the 21 samples”.
According to Coren they said “that no treatment would be necessary for the moment. Just monitoring”.
Coren has presented on TV shows including BBC Two programme Amazing Hotels: Life Beyond The Lobby.
He also presented BBC Radio 4’s Front Row for one series.
His debut novel, Winkler, won the Bad Sex In Fiction Award in 2005.
