Victoria Derbyshire has opened up about the emotional impact of losing her hair during chemotherapy, describing the moment she saw clumps in the sink as "devastating". The BBC Newsnight presenter, who was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2015, said she was ultimately grateful to be alive despite the changes to her appearance.
Hair loss and mastectomy
Writing in The i Paper, Derbyshire recalled: "The chemo I was going through to keep me alive having had breast cancer had caught up with me, and I was pretty devastated. Would I need to wear a wig? Will it ever grow back properly? These were just two of the questions that raced around my mind." She noted that her appearance had already changed after a single mastectomy, but that "didn't bother me as much. That breast had cancer in it and I was glad it was gone. I didn't really give a stuff about whether I looked lopsided, I was alive and I was going to see my boys grow up."
Comments on PM's wife
Her remarks came as she discussed the courage of newly appointed Prime Minister Andy Burnham's wife, Marie-France van Heel, who chose to undergo a pre-emptive double mastectomy at 40. Van Heel lost her sister Claire to breast cancer in 2006, and her mother and another sister were also diagnosed. Derbyshire, who experienced the disease herself, reflected on the difficult decisions faced by those at high risk.
Cancer journey
Derbyshire discovered her cancer when she was 46, after noticing an inverted nipple. She underwent chemotherapy, a single mastectomy and 30 sessions of radiotherapy. Derbyshire, who later appeared on I'm a Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here!, received the all-clear 10 months after diagnosis. In 2019, she told The Times that exercise had helped her manage pain: "I have now found the secret to banishing the aches - exercise. Going to the gym regularly is a first for me. It's a joy and a relief that the stretching and strengthening of muscles has dramatically reduced the pain."
Tribute to Sir Alex Younger
In June, at the end of a Newsnight episode, Derbyshire paid tribute to Sir Alex Younger, the former MI6 chief who died of cancer at 62. She described him as a friend of the programme, saying: "Before we go, we wanted to pay tribute to a man we considered a friend of Newsnight: Sir Alex Younger, former head of MI6, who we learned today had died of cancer at the age of just 62. As an ex-Chief of Secret Intelligence Service, he regularly sat alongside me on this sofa, and in the middle of tumultuous world events, shared his incredible expertise and wisdom, and whatever was going on, however frightening or volatile, he always managed to make you feel slightly better about it."
