Nick Owen on his enduring 40-year friendship with Anne Diamond

Those of us with longer recollections will maybe bear in mind them as breakfast tv’s first skilled golden couple. 

Long earlier than Susanna Reid and Piers Morgan, Holly Willoughby and Phillip Schofield and even the lately paired Ben Shephard and Cat Deeley, it was Nick Owen and Anne Diamond who hundreds of thousands of Brits woke to every morning. 

With an ever-revolving wardrobe of snug knitwear and a relaxed, personable demeanor, Owen was the traditional yin to Diamond’s sprightly and vivacious yang on TV-am. 

Launched in 1983, it could summon the delivery of breakfast TV as we all know it, cement a long-lasting working relationship and, crucially, a detailed private friendship that also endures to at the present time. 

And Owen, now 76 and dealing away from mainstream tv, admits there’s a horrible irony in Diamond’s breast most cancers prognosis coming shortly earlier than docs found he had an ‘aggressive’ type of prostate most cancers. 

Speaking to MailOnline as he launches new prostate most cancers podcast Deadly Silent, he stated: ‘She says she’s doing advantageous and I say I’m doing advantageous, however it knocks the stuffing out of you. 

‘We’ve stored in contact with one another. It’s ironic actually, is not it, that individuals of a sure age affiliate us as a pair, very a lot going again 40 years plus now, and we nearly concurrently find yourself with the 2 prime female and male cancers and are type of being handled in parallel.’ 

The presenter admits his enduring friendship with Diamond, 69, has enabled them to supply each other emotional assist whereas working their means by means of respective most cancers remedies. 

He added: ‘We discover nice consolation in that as a result of we’re very shut mates and have been for a very long time, although we do not see one another on daily basis like we used to. 

‘I wish to really feel that we have each helped one another get by means of it.’ 

Owen confirmed his prognosis in August 2023, simply two months after Diamond revealed her personal most cancers battle, having been given the sobering information on the identical day she discovered she was receiving an MBE. 

The presenter began going for normal PSA (prostate specific-antigen) assessments after turning 60,  however an acute consciousness of the sickness and its tell-tale signs – problem urinating or urinating too steadily amongst them – did not put together him for a optimistic prognosis.  

He stated: ‘It was final yr that my GP stated I feel your figures are barely excessive for somebody of your age – I used to be 75 on the time – and I feel you must see somebody. 

‘I used to be very reluctant on the time and stated “they’re not very high are they? Are you sure?” And he stated “yeah, just for reassurance if nothing else.”

‘So I did go and see a specialist and he stated he wasn’t too frightened both by the figures however let’s have an MRI and the MRI confirmed there was one thing. 

‘Then I had a biopsy which confirmed there actually was one thing and it was aggressive. It was attempting to burst out of my prostate, and that’s the large hazard in fact, when it breaks out of your prostate and travels by means of the physique. Who is aware of what is going to occur. 

‘So that is the way it developed. I did not have any signs actually, and it was all a horrible shock.’ 

Owen’s devoted second spouse Vicki Beevers was by his facet as he started the troublesome technique of informing the 4 grownup youngsters he shares with first spouse Jill Lavery, earlier than contemplating the most effective accessible types of therapy. 

‘She was with me all through all my conferences with varied medics, so she was proper there for the very emotional second once we had been instructed how severe it was, and that was horrible,’ he recalled. 

‘It is an emotional shock, and the psychological factor of it, and in addition bodily you undergo loads of stuff that is not a lot enjoyable.’  

‘And then I needed to contact my youngsters, who’re grown up now. I’ve acquired three sons and one daughter, and of the three sons two are of their forties and one is in his late thirties. 

‘I needed to clarify to them that issues are a bit severe, and it is not simple on the telephone, to be sincere.’ 

Prostate most cancers is the most typical most cancers in males throughout the United Kingdom. One in eight males will get it in some unspecified time in the future of their lives and greater than 52,000 new instances are recognized yearly.

National statistics from GenesisCare counsel a staggering 80 % of males are reluctant to speak in regards to the situation, whereas 71 % really feel embarrassed by the warning indicators. 

And Owen says the worrying figures had been the catalyst for his new podcast, which provides males a secure area to speak about prostate most cancers, whereas the illness’s potential hereditary hyperlink prompted him to make his three sons hyper-vigilant.

He stated: ‘It makes them cautious, in fact. I can not stress to them sufficient that they do have to regulate issues. Perhaps they don’t seem to be the age to fret but, however allowing for their father has had it, any time after 40 I might need them to consider seeing a physician and having a PSA etcetera.

‘The hereditary factor is kind of an enormous issue. I truly met somebody, a lady, who instructed me her father had prostate most cancers, and so have his three brothers. 

‘So that is 4 brothers, all of their sixties, all had prostate most cancers, and their father had it as effectively. That is an ideal illustration of the hereditary familial factor of it.’ 

 Owen is now most cancers free and again at work – albeit on a part-time foundation – after having his prostate, together with 25 lymph nodes, fully eliminated throughout a painstaking emergency operation. 

‘Hopefully, you may by no means say by no means, however hopefully the most cancers is all gone,’ he stated. ‘But there was no query in my thoughts that that is what wanted to be performed as a result of it was aggressive and it needed to be performed rapidly. 

‘I’m working two days per week and I would not wish to do greater than that anyway now, as a result of I’m 76. I’m nonetheless loving work, I nonetheless love the information and I’m nonetheless an avid devourer of reports so I wish to hold going so long as I can.

‘Everyone is now working that for much longer in life, some by alternative, some not. I’m by means of alternative and I wish to hold going, I wish to hold the outdated mind ticking over.

‘I’m simply so grateful that I’ve reached this level as a result of a yr in the past issues had been getting actually powerful.’ 

The presenter is now making ready to host his podcast with a recent outlook and a renewed consciousness of his personal mortality after making it by means of essentially the most troublesome yr of his life. 

‘You immediately get hit a little bit bit tougher when people who you realize go away, particularly of their seventies, as I’m, and also you admire the day after day extra and understand you’ve got to stay right now, for right now, and never simply fear in regards to the future,’ hew stated. 

‘You have to understand the day, and admire the sunshine while you sometimes get it. 

‘It’s slowed me up, made me understand that some issues are extra vital than others and admire the folks round me, and I’m eternally grateful that I’ve come by means of such an terrible time.’ 

Nick Owen is fronting a brand new ‘Deadly Silent’ prostate most cancers podcast, dropped at you by the UK’s main specialist most cancers care supplier GenesisCare, who supply superior and efficient 5-day prostate most cancers therapy. Visit genesiscare.com/uk/deadlysilent for extra data.