An emotional return to Heart Breakfast for Jamie Theakston
Jamie Theakston returns to Heart Breakfast
There were tears this morning when Jamie Theakston officially returned to Heart Breakfast to host his first show after his cancer diagnosis five months ago.
The Heart Breakfast team gave Jamie a huge return including a motorcade of motorcycle escorts, a brass band and a whole stream of special guests including Davina McCall who was one of the people integral to Jamie’s cancer diagnosis and recently underwent her own cancer journey.
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Joining Jamie and Amanda Holden in the studio, Davina told him that back in August, she worried she’d hurt him after a strong hug left him in pain.
Jamie responded: “Well, listen, without you doing that, I would not have known that there was something wrong with my throat.
“So in actual fact, it wasn’t that you did any damage, it was the opposite.”
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There were some messages played out from friends and family, which caused Jamie to shed a few tears. These included from Alexander Armstrong, Sophie Seigel, Toby Anstis, Mat Wilkinson, a listener and Jamie’s children Sidney and Kit.
After the messages, Amanda told Jamie: “I told you that you needed that toilet roll. Bless your heart. What an amazing man you are. You’ve really fought very hard, Jamie. You’ve kept your sense of humour, which is the most important thing, I think.”
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Following Jamie’s original announcement of his diagnosis, the NHS saw a big jump in people going to its website to check on the condition. Professor Peter Johnson from the NHS was on the show to explain.
He said: “When Jamie had obviously told people what was going on with his laryngeal cancer, we saw a huge jump in people going to the NHS website to look up laryngeal cancer.
“We normally see about 400 visits a day to that site. And over the 48 hours after the post, it went up to about 11,000.
“So, a huge increase in the number of people looking for information. And what that tells you is that talking about these things really does help people to look into what’s going on and to raise the awareness of what the symptoms are, that sort of thing.”
Listen to Heart Breakfast with Jamie Theakston and Amanda Holden weekdays from 06:30 – 10:00 across the UK and on Global Player.