George Alagiah: 'I wasn’t afraid of dying. I just wanted to get on with treatment'

Now free of stage four bowel cancer, the BBC newsreader says he wouldn't change anything about the previous year of his life

Six o'clock news newsreader George Alagiah, photographed at Broadcasting House in central London after recovering from stage four bowel cancer. Credit: Photo: Clara Molden

“It’s good to be back with you.” It was with just a rather understated seven-word sentence at the end of his bulletin, that award-winning foreign correspondent and newsreader George Alagiah OBE, lead presenter of the BBC’s News at Six since 2007, acknowledged an absence of 18 months from our screens – not to mention 17 rounds of chemotherapy and three major operations, including one which lasted 10 hours, to treat advanced bowel cancer.

“All this time, I wanted to get back for my team,” he says, “and for my audience. I didn’t want to give a running commentary while I was away, but I received letters by the bagful. I’ve always regarded the viewers as my friends. I wanted to come back for them.”

Alagiah, now 60, smiles warmly. He looks well (slim, but not gaunt), and admits: “People do seem surprised. They think I ought to look terrible.”

Alagiah has been absent from work for 18 months while he underwent treatment for advanced bowel cancer.

Not without good cause. The official announcement in April 2014 that Alagiah would be taking a break from work due to cancer was short and contained few details. Alagiah tweeted just the once: “It’s been a week of shock & hope, tears & laughter, realism & optimism – but so touched and strengthened by good wishes. Thank you all.”

But gradually it emerged that Alagiah’ s cancer was stage four – as serious as it gets. Later, it was revealed the cancer had spread to his liver and lymph nodes.

“It really was a nightmare time,” he says now, in the first interview since he went back to work a few weeks before Christmas last year. Alagiah had just returned from South Sudan when he noticed blood in his stools. Otherwise, he felt fit and well, but decided to get checked out by his GP, who arranged a colonoscopy.

When he came round, the doctor revealed that a large tumour at the lower end of the bowel had been detected. Subsequent MRI scans found eight tumours in his liver.

Doctors found a tumour in Alagiah's bowel and eight in his liver.

However, Alagiah says he was not interested in having conversations about statistics or potential longevity. “Doctors don’t use the ‘d word’ [death], but nor do they use the ‘l word’ [life]. You just read between the lines.”

The statistics would not make for easy reading: 50 per cent of those with advanced bowel cancer survive for five years post-diagnosis. But, according to Bowel Cancer UK, nearly 16,000 men and women die of bowel cancer every year in the UK. It is the second most common cause of cancer death in the UK, behind lung cancer.

Alagiah adds: “I wasn’t afraid of dying. I just wanted to get on with treatment.

“Some people say you have to fight cancer, but I felt that was unhelpful. It was my own body which had gone AWOL somehow. I had to get to a place of contentment, and that meant shedding other encumbrances such as worrying about what was happening and how it was being done.”

For Alagiah, this meant high doses of chemo which brought their own challenge. “You start losing weight, but that means the dose has to be reduced. So you need to keep your weight up somehow in order to get enough chemo to have an effect on the cancer. I was eating ladles of Ben and Jerry’s ice-cream at night.”

George Alagiah preparing to present BBC News at Six for the first time since his treatment for cancer.

After surgery to remove the tumours in his liver in August 2014, which was unsuccessful, there was a further procedure which saw most of his liver removed. Alagiah then suffered an allergic reaction to an antibiotic, and fluid built up below his lungs, which needed to be drained.

After a bowel operation last year, Alagiah was fitted with an ileostomy bag, which collects intestinal waste, which he still needs, although he is hoping for a reversal in time.

“I haven’t been able to eat normally at all since then. Everything is the opposite of my old healthy diet. I live on white pasta, bread, rice, with hardly any vegetables. Just broccoli florets boiled to a paste, and occasional tinned sliced peaches. I’m dreaming of a bowl of salad.”

He is happy to talk about having a stoma bag openly as he doesn’t want it to be taboo. But that is not to say he accepts it. “It isn’t normal, not for me. It’s not the life I want. I have to get up at 6am in order to eat my day’s calories before I get to work. I used to be a travelling presenter, so this is not practical.”

Despite the limitations caused by his treatment, Alagiah’s cancer has been illuminating in other ways. “There is no silver lining to cancer,” he says. “Certainly not one as advanced as mine. But I suddenly understood that I was part of a community, at home in north London. That while I knew my wife Frances and I had friends, these were people ready to pitch in with whatever needed doing, from cutting keys to making meals. It was quite something.”

George Alagiah accompanied by his wife Frances and sons Adam, 21, left and Matt, 17, at Buckingham Palace, after collecting his OBE from the Queen.

Frances, head of Fundraising for the Fairtrade Foundation, and the couple’s two sons Adam, 29, and Matthew, 25, were of course a “huge support”.

“At times, it was harder for my family than it was for me, because all I had to do was submit to my treatment and do what I was told, but they had to be there to help me and cope with the worry at the same time as working and living their normal lives.”

He says: "The experience has brought us closer than ever before.”

Alagiah found himself making daily trips to his local park, walking the same 200m stretch, aiming to walk round one pond on a bad day, two on a good day. “People’s reactions were so varied. No one knows how to react. One friend came up, and in his embarrassment, pummelled me with questions, saying ‘So are you going to live?’, which felt awkward. But another guy gave me an almighty hug, and just said call me if I can do anything.”

As the months passed, Alagiah kept a journal and, incredibly, finished a novel.

“I realised I wouldn’t give back a single day of the previous year’s experience. I am a richer person for it.”

Was he also watching the Six O’Clock News thinking he would be doing it differently? Better?

George and his wife Frances.

He laughs. “I didn’t watch a lot of news. My levels of concentration were so poor because of the treatment. The nurses call it ‘chemo brain’.

“Anyway, I didn’t want to come back as a new broom. There was no need. The Six has the most faithful viewers of any news programme with people coming back to us two or three times a week. You don’t fix things if they aint broke.”

The BBC’s Ten O’Clock News, presented by Huw Edwards, may be caught up in a catfight with Tom Bradby’s ITV News at Ten, each claiming superiority over content and style, but the Six O’Clock News remains the most watched TV news bulletin every day, with nearly five million nightly viewers – a number that is said to be on the increase.

How does he explain its appeal in an era when many of us don’t finish work in time to get home by 6pm? “I see myself as a guardian of the programme. I think I know my audience – and we have to deliver the news in a way that is relevant, that’s the key. We get to the same place as the Ten, but we take a different road.”

So how did it feel going back? “I felt I had to read myself back in – build up that memory muscle and absorb intellectually all that was going on.

“I love what I do as a presenter. But the reporter in me is still itching to go out and tell stories. Deep down, there is nothing like putting on a pair of boots and getting on a plane. But I’m not thinking about that now. I have to take it as it comes.

“And it was tough the first few weeks. I had to work really hard. But whatever happened, I needed to come back for myself, to get back on the horse.”

His first three days back at work were followed by three days of sleep. And it has taken until this month for Alagiah to return to our screens four days a week.

Not that he is completely out of the woods health-wise. For the past year, he has been told that his three monthly scans and regular blood tests show no sign of recurrence of the cancer, but from March, he enters Year Two post-treatment, which he has been warned is the most likely period for the illness to return, if it does at all.

Alagiah admits the thought of it coming back is unnerving. “I try to shove that feeling into the attic in my mind a week or ten days before I am due to have a scan, yet I can’t stop thinking about it. I get anxious and then there is a huge relief when the doctor tells me it is clear again. But I am under no illusions. The doctor warned me last year: ‘Your cancer knows the road – the pathway out of the gut.’ It can happen again.”