Lauren Laverne hopes she is a 'better person' now she's cancer-free
Lauren Laverne announced in November 2024 that she had beaten cancer, and the BBC Radio 4 'Desert Island Discs' host hopes she is "a better person now".
Lauren Laverne hopes she is "a better person now" she is cancer-free.
The 46-year-old radio DJ and TV presenter was given the all-clear in November 2024 - three months after she revealed her diagnosis - and she now thinks surviving has given her "a new fearlessness" in life.
The BBC Radio 4's 'Desert Island Discs' host - who is Good Housekeeping UK's May issue cover star - told the magazine: "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. 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.”
When 'The One Show' co-presenter was discharged from the hospital towards the end of 2024, she, and her DJ husband Graeme Fisher both "burst into tears and cried" in the car before they drove home.
She added: "I think it’s only when the storm passes that you realise what you’d been holding in."
Lauren, who is back working at the corporation's Radio 6 Music and Radio 4 stations, as well as the BBC One chat show, had always been "anxious" about getting cancer because her late former City of Sunderland councillor mum Celia Gofton had a terminal diagnosis and died in 2022 from it.
The star admitted: "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. "
From 2018 until 2024, Lauren described that period as "pretty bonkers" - good being landing the 'Desert Island Discs' in 2018 and the 'BBC Radio 6 Music Breakfast Show' in 2019, and bad due to suffering multiple heartbreaks.
She explained: "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."
The full interview can be read now in the May issue of Good Housekeeping.
