Radio DJ Chris Evans given ‘all-clear’ after skin cancer treatment

Chris Evans has revealed that he is now cancer free, eight weeks after he was first diagnosed.

The radio DJ, 57, told listeners of his Virgin Radio UK Breakfast Show in August that he had been diagnosed with the early stages of skin cancer and that he had caught it quickly meaning it was “as treatable as cancer can possibly be”.

On Wednesday, he told listeners that he had lost a night of sleep over an email he had received about the cancer that was removed from his leg.

He said: “I didn’t sleep, hardly at all last night … two or three hours. A good night, I’ll get six, four or five and because I wake up every 90 minutes for my circadian rhythm, and I surrender to that now, actually I look forward to going back to sleep three times a night, because that’s where I live.

“But I never thought for a second you could lose a night’s sleep because of an email like this.”

He showed co-presenters Vassos Alexander and Rachel Horne the email he had received from the consultant plastic surgeon and Alexander read it live on air.

Reading the email, Alexander said: “I have forwarded the pathology report. It is excellent news. There is no residual disease. You have the all-clear.”

Evans said: “I had a phone conversation with my dermatologist, and she told me that, obviously, the freckle that had moved, metastasised, was malignant, because the biopsy had come back, and that I would need treatment, and would have to have it removed. So we did, and that was last Thursday.

“And so, at quarter-to-four last Thursday, I had cancer and at quarter-to-five, I didn’t. And I just found that out last night. And that’s because time is your biggest weapon against it, if you have an abundance of it, and its biggest weapon against you if you have a lack of it.”

Urging people to get checked if they have cancer symptoms, he added: “If you’re worried about anything, just bear in mind the fact that eight weeks ago I was diagnosed with cancer and now I don’t have it at all. At all.

“And that’s why you just need to attend to things. And it’s really tough, because for years I was the guy who wouldn’t go anywhere near that. But you know, times have changed, thank God.”

In January 2019, Evans moved to Virgin Radio after leaving his long-running breakfast programme on BBC Radio 2 the previous year.

He was also previously on Channel 4 morning show The Big Breakfast and comedy and music programme TFI Friday.