John Diamond was a journalist and broadcaster known for his wit as much as for his marriage to Nigella Lawson and he was by his own admission, a hypochondriac. After decades of seeing every little twinge as a portent of medical doom and waiting almost expectantly for the heart attack for which decades of over-indulgence must surely qualify him, it was as much a self-fulfilling prophesy as a big surprise when a lump in his neck turned out to be more sinister than he’d expected.
In March 1997 he was given a diagnosis of a cancerous lymph node in his neck and the doctors told him with confidence he had a 92% chance of being fine and dandy in no time at all. Sometimes doctors get things wrong – and ‘C: Because Cowards Get Cancer Too’ is Diamond’s best selling account of his experience with cancer, based in part on columns that he published in the Times newspaper’s Saturday magazine.
