TalkTV host James Whale confirms devastating cancer diagnosis during speech

Whale was originally diagnosed with kidney cancer in 2000

TalkTV and presenter James Whale has announced that he has only months to live due to terminal cancer.

The radio host revealed that he was dying from the disease in a speech delivered at the British Curry Awards in London on Monday night (28 November).

The 71-year-old – who competed on Celebrity Big Brother in 2016 – said he had only months to live.

He was originally diagnosed with kidney cancer in 2000. In 2021, he said that the disease had spread to his spine, brain, and lungs.

“I know a lot of you won’t like me, but this time next year I won’t be here,” he said at the Curry Awards. “I have terminal cancer.”

The controversial presenter went on to describe the past years he spent living with the disease.

“As you might be able to hear, I am having chemotherapy which makes it harder for me to breathe, but I’m OK. Don’t worry. I am in my seventies now and I just want to say don’t waste your time on stupid things that don’t matter.”

Recently, Whale wished A Place in the Sun star Jonnie Irwin luck. Irwin also has terminal cancer.

“Jonnie, mate, I wish you the best of luck. It is very difficult and you’re a lot younger than me. But I did start this journey 25 years ago,” he wrote in The Express.

“Hopefully things will help you get through that weren’t available previously, while the amount of work being done on fighting cancer is amazing.”

Jonnie Irwin has also been diagnosed with terminal cancer (Channel 4)

Whale continued: “I found it very difficult to talk about mine because I didn’t want people to think I was using it to get sympathy or for any other reason. But along with a number of other people in the public eye, I am at stage four. There is no stage five.”

The radio host has been candid about his diagnosis, previously opening up about his deliberation over whether to undergo euthanasia.

Whales said that he thought he “might as well go and get it over with” at Dignitas, a Swiss non-profit organisation.

He reconsidered his decision and ultimately decided against it. Whales’s wife Melinda died in 2018 from lung cancer.

In 2018, Whale was suspended by TalkRadio over an interview he conducted with Nichi Hodgson, who was sexually assaulted.

The station said “regrettable errors” were made by both presenters and producers of the show.