When the ultimate macho man, petrolhead Jeremy Clarkson, revealed this week that he has been privately battling âaggressiveâ prostate cancer, my first thought was: âCrikey, he deserves a Knighthood for services to menâs bits.â
An honour for coming clean about a disease that claims thousands of menâs lives a year, many of them needlessly as blokes are too ashamed or embarrassed about getting themselves checked.
They ignore that pain down below and dismiss concerns about getting up six times a night for a pee.
Thereâs no doubt that by talking about it candidly on his show Clarksonâs Farm, which is drawing more than four million viewers per episode in the current series, he will have saved lives.
If that doesnât deserve a knighthood, I donât know what does.
He should also be given recognition for his service to farmers, for revealing they are not all rich toffs to be taxed out of existence as this spiteful Leftie government and Rachel Reeves would have you believe. But honest folk working day and night without holidays tending their animals and their crops with humour and heartache to keep us fed.
I have to admit that I shed a quiet tear â all right, more of a sob â when Clarkson told us at the end of series five that he had been fighting cancer for a year.
âIf I hadnât have got myself checked out and they hadnât caught the problem early, this could have been my last harvest,â he said from his hospital bed.
Thereâs no doubt that by talking about his cancer candidly on his show Clarksonâs Farm, he will have saved lives
âIf this is all successful, Iâll see you for season six â and if it isnât, I wonât, take care everyone.â
Incredibly, this confession â graphic, moving and unbelievably honest for a macho man â led to a four-fold increase in men seeking advice about the disease and making appointments with their GPs.
Just stop and think what that means. Thousands of proud men â men like our partners or dads or brothers or close friends â getting checked and possibly warding off a death sentence. Thanks to Jeremy.
Last year, prostate was declared the most common cancer in the UK, killing 12,000 men a year. And many of them die because of menâs reluctance to talk to a doctor or even their partner about their prostate.
Thereâs also the fact that society today puts womenâs health first â itâs all about breast cancer or cervical cancer and regular mammograms and smear tests. Yet there still isnât mass screening for prostate in this country.
Which I really donât get, as a woman who gets every check under the sun free on the NHS. Why arenât checks for blokeâs parts universally and unquestioningly offered?.
So well done Jeremy for bravely highlighting this insidious, lurking bloke cancer.
Not that the UK honours system is likely to recognise his brilliant contribution any time soon. It is as obsessed with wokery and diversity and so on as every other arm of government â and Clarkson is the very opposite of political correctness.
He was gleefully booted out of Top Gear by the politically correct BBC after an altercation with a producer â although many of us suspect they couldnât bear him anyway because he represented everything they did not like,
And now, because he speaks the language of the majority in this country and relates to their fears and dreams, his Clarksonâs Farm show is a runaway and wonderfully refreshing success.
The former BBC executives who exiled him should read that and weep. And the rest of us should insist he gets that gong.
