Last summer, Lauren Laverne received a shock diagnosis of cancer, resulting in multiple surgeries, an extended stay in hospital and several months off work. In her first interview since, she sat down with Good Housekeeping to share her experience, and the relief of now being cancer-free.
“I think it’s only when the storm passes that you realise what you’ve been holding in," she says of the emotional release she felt when she left hospital.
“The day I was discharged, we managed to get downstairs and Graeme got me into the car and we didn’t even switch it on. We just sat in the car and both burst into tears and cried.”
The Desert Island Discs presenter shared how cancer was something that had played on her mind, having lost her mother and closest confidante, Celia, to the disease during Glastonbury weekend 2022.
“It was something I’d always been anxious about. Especially if you have family members who’ve been through it, you have a sort of watchfulness about your own health, which is obviously why I got tested for everything and why it was picked up, thank God, so early on,” she says.
“The previous six years had been pretty bonkers – and I mean good and bad. In 2018, I turned 40 and that was the year I got Desert Island Discs and the [BBC Radio 6 Music] breakfast show. Two weeks after I got Desert Island Discs, my dad became ill and died."
Now cancer-free and having returned to The One Show, Desert Island Discs and BBC 6 Music in her new mid-morning time slot, she’s retained a positive outlook, sharing how she might even love her life more than she did before her diagnosis.
“One of the really big things I’ve learned is that it’s all life. It’s all part and parcel and texture – a real life is lots of big experiences,” she says.
“And the truth of that is, like it or not, going through big stuff expands your emotional vocabulary. I’ve learned a massive amount and I hope I’m a better person now. And actually, I probably love my life more now than I did then, because I appreciate everything about it.”
Having been a worrier for much of her life, Lauren has noticed herself let go of the sort of anxiety she’d once have felt, too.
“There’s a new fearlessness. I mean, what’s life going to throw at me that’s worse than that? You’re not frightened of things going wrong because things have gone wrong," she says.
“It was like the monster came out from under the bed and you got a good look. And it’s kind of like, ‘Oh, well, I’ve seen it now.’ And so there was a kind of peace about that and I didn’t know how long that would last, but it’s very much still there. I don’t worry in the way that I used to worry.”
Read the full interview in Good Housekeeping’s May issue, on sale from 27th March.
Lauren presents on BBC Radio 6 Music (weekdays, 10am-1pm) and hosts Desert Island Discs on BBC Radio 4 and BBC Sounds (Sundays, 10-11am).
