TV presenter Anne Diamond has spoken of the heartbreaking circumstances in which she learned of her breast cancer diagnosis.
The GB News star has been absent from her role for nearly six months and recently shared the reason for her break with broadcasting colleague, Dan Wootton.
The 68-year old, whose television career began in the 1970s told Dan she was cruelly made aware of her condition on the same morning she learned she had been awarded her an OBE for her campaigning on cot deaths.
In 1991, following the death of her third son Sebastian, Anne co-founded a campaign calling for more research into cot death.
It's now believed her work has cut the UK's incidence of cot deaths down to 300 a year from 2,000.
The former Loose Women star told Dan: "It was a wonderful moment and that was like 9.30 in the morning. But I knew then, because I'd already seen my GP, that I had to go to a breast cancer screening thing later in the morning. I thought I would just go for a mammogram, and a couple of tests and I'd be free in an hour.
"I spent the entire morning at my local hospital where they did everything, biopsies, X-rays, CT scans, a couple of mammograms, everything, and by lunchtime I was still there. And a lovely lady came with a lanyard around her neck that said MacMillan Cancer Care and I knew then it was serious."
She added: "I don't have any advice for people because I'm still going through it. But I'm well enough to return to work. I had the full works, the full mastectomy. God, this is the first time I've talked about it, so it's quite difficult but I've had the full works. The first operation I had was nine hours long.
"I don't remember it. I was in and out like that, but nine hours of removal and rebuild, that took a lot of getting over and then I had an operation later where they took out lymph nodes as well, just to make sure they can trace the travel, if the cancer has travelled at all to the rest of the body. Luckily I don't think it did.
"I've had a load of radiotherapy, which I found very hard too. So it's been a journey, but I'm not pretending for a minute that I am extraordinary, because I am fully aware that a quarter of women in this country are going through what I've just gone through and I don't have any advice to give. I only have empathy."
Discussing her absence from the news channel, meanwhile, frustrated Anne said: "I haven't been on a world cruise, which is what I know social media has been saying, ‘oh, she's gone on one of her cruises’, because I'm well known now for loving cruises. It hasn't been a world cruise.
"It's been a fight against breast cancer. That's what it's been. It's been a long journey. And five months later, I'm still not at the end of the journey, but I'm through it enough to come back to work."
Anne is due to return to GB News this weekend to host Breakfast with Stephen Dixon.
If you have been affected by this story, advice and support can be found at Breast Cancer Support.
