Stephen Fry reveals cancer diagnosis for first time

Stephen Fry has announced that he has been battling prostate cancer.

Stephen Fry. picture: Matthew Eisman/Getty Images

The TV presenter shared a video on his Twitter page and wrote in the caption: “For the last 2 months I’ve been in the throes of a rather unwelcome and unexpected adventure.

“I’m sorry I haven’t felt able to talk about it till now, but here I am explaining what has been going on.”

Fry said that he underwent surgery to remove the prostate in January.

He said: “It all seemed to go pretty well, they took the prostate out, they took out 11 lymph nodes.”

Fry, who pulled out of presenting the Bafta Film awards for the first time in years earlier this month, described the cancer as an “aggressive little bugger”.

Fry told fans: “It’s all very personal and undignified so I might as well bite the bullet.”

He added: “It doesn’t seem to have spread because what you don’t want is to spread from one area to another, but one of the lymph nodes had something that called for active surveillance.”

Fry said he had surgery in the first week of January, adding: “It all seemed to go pretty well, they took the prostate out, they took out 11 lymph nodes.

“The various bits that were taken out were examined and it turned out I had a Gleason score of nine and considering ten is the maximum, it was clearly an aggressive little bugger.”

He continued: “So what next? You have to recover and that is what I’ve been doing, in case you’ve been wondering why I’ve been out of the public eye, I’m sure you haven’t!

“But I’ve been keeping my head down as much as possible because you want to get better without strangers sending you cards and letters because you have to reply to them all.

“It’s a bit of a business having an operation like that, there are five holes punctured in you, it’s like being stabbed five times.”

He added: “To the body, it’s the same traumatic effect.

“It’s all pretty undignified and unfortunate.”