- If you have been affected by anything in this article please call the Macmillan Support Line on 0808 808 00 00
- Nick Owen is fronting a new Deadly Silent prostate cancer podcast, brought to you by the UK’s leading specialist cancer care provider GenesisCare
Those of us with longer memories will perhaps remember them as breakfast television’s first professional golden couple.
Long before Susanna Reid and Piers Morgan, Holly Willoughby and Phillip Schofield or even the recently paired Ben Shephard and Cat Deeley, it was Nick Owen and Anne Diamond who millions of Brits woke to each morning.
With an ever-revolving wardrobe of comfortable knitwear and a relaxed, personable demeanor, Owen was the conventional yin to Diamond’s sprightly and vivacious yang on TV-am.
Launched in 1983, it would summon the birth of breakfast TV as we know it, cement a long-lasting working relationship and, crucially, a close personal friendship that still endures to this day.
And Owen, now 76 and working away from mainstream television, admits there is a terrible irony in Diamond’s breast cancer diagnosis coming shortly before doctors discovered he had an ‘aggressive’ form of prostate cancer.
Speaking to MailOnline as he launches new prostate cancer podcast Deadly Silent, he said: ‘She says she’s doing fine and I say I’m doing fine, but it knocks the stuffing out of you.
‘We’ve kept in touch with each other. It’s ironic really, isn’t it, that people of a certain age associate us as a couple, very much going back 40 years plus now, and we almost simultaneously end up with the two prime male and female cancers and are sort of being treated in parallel.’
The presenter admits his enduring friendship with Diamond, 69, has enabled them to offer one another emotional support while working their way through respective cancer treatments.
He added: ‘We find great comfort in that because we’re very close friends and have been for a long time, even though we don’t see each other every day like we used to.
‘I like to feel that we’ve both helped each other get through it.’
Owen confirmed his diagnosis in August 2023, just two months after Diamond revealed her own cancer battle, having been given the sobering news on the same day she found out she was receiving an MBE.
The presenter started going for regular PSA (prostate specific-antigen) tests after turning 60, but an acute awareness of the illness and its tell-tale symptoms – difficulty urinating or urinating too frequently among them – didn’t prepare him for a positive diagnosis.
He said: ‘It was last year that my GP said I think your figures are slightly high for someone of your age – I was 75 at the time – and I think you should see someone.
‘I was very reluctant at the time and said “they’re not very high are they? Are you sure?” And he said “yeah, just for reassurance if nothing else.”
‘So I did go and see a specialist and he said he wasn’t too worried either by the figures but let’s have an MRI and the MRI showed there was something.
‘Then I had a biopsy which showed there really was something and it was aggressive. It was trying to burst out of my prostate, and that is the big danger of course, when it breaks from your prostate and travels through the body. Who knows what will happen.
‘So that’s how it developed. I didn’t have any symptoms really, and it was all a terrible shock.’
Owen’s devoted second wife Vicki Beevers was by his side as he began the difficult process of informing the four adult children he shares with first wife Jill Lavery, before considering the best available forms of treatment.
‘She was with me throughout all my meetings with various medics, so she was right there for the very emotional moment when we were told how serious it was, and that was horrible,’ he recalled.
‘It is an emotional shock, and the psychological element of it, and also physically you go through a lot of stuff that’s not much fun.’
‘And then I had to contact my kids, who are grown up now. I’ve got three sons and one daughter, and of the three sons two are in their forties and one is in his late thirties.
‘I had to explain to them that things are a bit serious, and it’s not easy on the phone, to be honest.’
Prostate cancer is the most common cancer in men across the United Kingdom. One in eight men will get it at some point in their lives and more than 52,000 new cases are diagnosed every year.
National statistics from GenesisCare suggest a staggering 80 percent of men are reluctant to talk about the condition, while 71 percent feel embarrassed by the warning signs.
And Owen says the worrying figures were the catalyst for his new podcast, which offers men a safe space to talk about prostate cancer, while the disease’s potential hereditary link prompted him to make his three sons hyper-vigilant.
He said: ‘It makes them wary, of course. I can’t stress to them enough that they do need to keep an eye on things. Perhaps they’re not the age to worry yet, but bearing in mind their father has had it, any time after 40 I would want them to think about seeing a doctor and having a PSA etcetera.
‘The hereditary thing is quite a big factor. I actually met someone, a woman, who told me her father had prostate cancer, and so have his three brothers.
‘So that’s four brothers, all in their sixties, all had prostate cancer, and their father had it as well. That is a perfect illustration of the hereditary familial element of it.’
Owen is now cancer free and back at work – albeit on a part-time basis – after having his prostate, including 25 lymph nodes, completely removed during a painstaking emergency operation.
‘Hopefully, you can never say never, but hopefully the cancer is all gone,’ he said. ‘But there was no question in my mind that that’s what needed to be done because it was aggressive and it had to be done quickly.
‘I’m working two days a week and I wouldn’t want to do more than that anyway now, because I’m 76. I’m still loving work, I still love the news and I’m still an avid devourer of news so I want to keep going as long as I can.
‘Everyone is now working that much longer in life, some by choice, some not. I am through choice and I want to keep going, I want to keep the old brain ticking over.
‘I’m just so grateful that I have reached this point because a year ago things were getting really tough.’
The presenter is now preparing to host his podcast with a fresh outlook and a renewed awareness of his own mortality after making it through the most difficult year of his life.
‘You suddenly get hit a little bit harder when people that you know pass away, especially in their seventies, as I am, and you appreciate the day to day more and realize you have got to live today, for today, and not just worry about the future,’ hew said.
‘You have to appreciate the day, and appreciate the sunshine when you occasionally get it.
‘It’s slowed me up, made me realize that some things are more important than others and appreciate the people around me, and I am eternally grateful that I’ve come through such an awful time.’
Sarah Carter is a health and wellness expert residing in the UK. With a background in healthcare, she offers evidence-based advice on fitness, nutrition, and mental well-being, promoting healthier living for readers.
