Alan Davies has opened up about his shock cancer scare, admitting he was ‘very lucky’.
The comedian, 59, appeared on ITV’s Lorraine on Tuesday to discuss his new autobiography, White Male Stand-Up.
It is a follow-up to his 2020 childhood memoir, Just Ignore him.
While writing his latest book last year, Alan revealed that he had a health scare during a trip to the toilet.
He told host Lorraine Kelly: ‘I am ok. That happened when I was writing the book, and there was a bit of blood in the toilet bowl after a wee.
‘And you have to ring the doctor immediately and luckily they caught it early and I went in and I had a tumour and I had it removed.
Alan Davies has opened up about his shock cancer scare, admitting he was ‘very lucky’ during an appearance on Lorraine on Tuesday
The comedian, 59, appeared on ITV ‘s Lorraine on Tuesday to discuss his new autobiography, White Male Stand-Up
While writing his latest book last year, Alan revealed that he had a health scare during a trip to the toilet
‘If I hadn’t spotted it who knows. It was bladder cancer, but I was very lucky.’
Alan’s new book unpacks all the ‘terrible things’ he’d suppressed for decades, including the many years of abuse he suffered from his father.
The comedian was sexually abused by his father between the ages of eight to 13, following the death of his mother from leukaemia when he was six years old.
During his rise to fame he found himself struggling with alcohol and anger as a result of his childhood, but it was only after a therapist helped him come to terms with what had happened that he went to the police eight years ago.
He has since discussed the abuse and how his childhood led him down a troublesome path in his memoir, Just Ignore Him, which was released in 2020.
Alan told The Telegraph: ‘If the abuse occurred within a family, as it usually does, the instinct to withhold feels right, because families don’t usually support the victim.’
He continued: ‘My older brother stopped speaking to me after I had dad arrested. He stopped sending birthday cards to my kids. I still have some contact with my sister, I see her son.
‘They would have still preferred I didn’t say anything at all. But this is bigger than my family. You can’t not shine a light on it, just because you find it “a bit awkward.”‘
Alan’s new book unpacks all the ‘terrible things’ he’d suppressed for decades, including the many years of abuse he suffered from his father (pictured in July)
Alan told The Telegraph: ‘If the abuse occurred within a family, as it usually does, the instinct to withhold feels right, because families don’t usually support the victim’ (pictured in 2021)
Alan finally reported his father, who is still alive, in 2017, but was told that he wouldn’t be able to stand trial as he was in his eighties, had dementia and was in a care home.
During an appearance on Lorraine in 2021, he told guest host Cat Deeley that ‘secrets and shame are terrible things to carry for a child’ while discussing his memoir Just Ignore Him, in which the abuse was detailed.
Alan admitted that he had taken a ‘long time’ to find a way to discuss the ‘difficult’ aspects of his childhood, telling Cat that he wasn’t able to share his story on stage in his stand-up comedy routines.
The Jonathan Creek star told how he’s had friends share their own experiences of childhood abuse after reading his words, with Alan feeling that this aspect was one of the most ‘important’ things to come from him penning the memoir.
He explained: ‘It took me a long time to kind of find a forum as it were to talk about the more difficult things in my childhood, I haven’t been able to do it in stand-up comedy, I’ve done it in this book.
‘Several people, people I know, one or two quite well known people, they’ve come to me and they’ve said “I’ve read your book and a similar thing happened to me” or “similar things happened to me” and then we’ve had a conversation about it as normal as talking about having a cup of tea.’
He continued: ‘I feel like that’s the most important thing to come from the book, what I hoped would come from the book was that other people would find someone to speak to. Because secrets and shame are terrible things to carry for a child.
‘But also, you start carrying them as a child and then you carry them your whole life and they taint everything you do. They taint your whole life experience, all your relationships, everything.’
During an appearance on Lorraine in 2021, he said that ‘secrets and shame are terrible things to carry for a child’ while discussing his memoir Just Ignore Him
When asked if writing the book helps in anyway, he responded: ‘It does because recurring thoughts and recurring memories are just there every day.
‘It took me a couple of years to write this and it felt like kind of extracting something and made something worthwhile, I did the best words that I could.’
Alan’s difficult childhood was made worse by the fact that that he had lost his mum to when he was just six years old, with the physical, emotional and sexual abuse at the hands of his father following.
During the interview, Alan also spoke warmly about his mother Shirley, who sadly passed away from leukaemia aged 38, with the star suggesting that she may have influenced his future career.
He said of her: ‘She liked to laugh… she got leukaemia, so I was 6 when she died, I don’t have a lot. But I don’t remember being shouted at, I just remember trying to make her laugh or other people making her laugh.
‘I remember once we had someone doing some painting in the house, I must’ve been 3 or 4 and he said “Engelbert Humperdinck”. It was top of the hit parade at the time.
‘And she really laughed at that and I thought “what’s going on?” That didn’t sound like a name so I went “what’s your name?” and he went “Engelbert Humperdinck” again and she laughed again, she was a good audience.
‘I think she was my first audience maybe and her not being around, that’s what part of what made me or pushed me towards being a comedian, maybe I don’t know.’
