TV-am legend Anne Diamond reveals she has been diagnosed with breast cancer

TV legend Anne Diamond has emotionally revealed that she has been diagnosed with breast cancer and has had a double mastectomy.

The 68-year-old fought back tears when she confirmed she was battling the disease in an interview with GB News this evening.

Speaking to Dan Wootton on the channel, she recalled getting the news from doctors on the same day she got an OBE and said it had been “an amazing journey.”

Anne, who currently works for GB News, has been off the air for nearly six months and is still undergoing ‘heavy’ treatment for the disease, including radiotherapy.

Despite this, she will return to work this weekend to present Breakfast with Stephen Dixon on the channel on Saturday.

Speaking on Dan Wootton Tonight, Anne said it had been a “battle” against the disease, after five months “I’m still not at the end of the journey, but I’ve got through enough to get back to work.”

The morning TV legend, who rose to prominence for presenting TV-am from 1983 to 1990 and was also a regular panelist on The Wright Stuff and Jeremy Vine, received the devastating diagnosis the same day she was told she had an OBE. would receive.

Anne said: ‘It was a beautiful moment [being notified about the OBE] and that was about 9:30 in the morning.

“But I knew then, because I had already seen my GP, that I had to go for a breast cancer screening later in the morning. I thought I’d just go for a mammogram, and a few tests and I’d be out in an hour.

“I spent all morning at my local hospital where they did everything, biopsies, X-rays, CT scans, a few mammograms, everything, and by lunchtime I was still there.

“And a lovely lady came up with a string around her neck that said MacMillan Cancer Care and that’s when I knew it was serious.”

The mother-of-five revealed she was still going through her “heavy” treatment after working for months to focus on battling cancer.

She added, “I don’t have any advice for people because I’m still going through it. But I’m good enough to go back to work. I had the full works, the full mastectomy.

“God, this is my first time talking about it, so it’s kind of hard, but I’ve had the full job. The first surgery I underwent lasted nine hours.

‘I can not remember. I was so in and out but nine hours of removal and rebuilding that took a lot of effort to get over and then I had surgery later where they also removed lymph nodes just to make sure they can trace the journey, if the cancer has traveled all the way to the rest of the body. Luckily I don’t think so.

‘I had a lot of radiotherapy, which I also found very difficult.

“So it’s been a journey, but I don’t pretend for a minute that I’m extraordinary because I’m fully aware that a quarter of the women in this country are going through what I just went through and I don’t have any advice to offer. I only have empathy.’

Anne, pictured here on Loose Women in 2018, put in several months of work fighting the disease

The 68-year-old, pictured, received her diagnosis on the same day she was told she would have an OBE

Anne was appointed an OBE in the 2023 New Year Honors for her services to public health and charity, namely her campaign to raise awareness of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS).

She became an awareness advocate after her son Sebastian died of cot death in 1991 and spearheaded the “Back to Sleep” campaign urging parents to make sure their babies slept on their backs rather than their stomachs.

This has been credited with significantly reducing the number of SIDS cases in Britain from 2,000 to just 300 a year.

After being awarded the honor, she said, “This OBE is literally a credit to everyone who has helped me and whose groundbreaking research my campaign was based on.

This is also proof that the media can be a force for good. According to the government’s own report, 80% of parents who received the life-saving advice got it from the TV ads.

“But this is mostly for Sebastian, whom we still miss, and all those tragically lost lives.”

The TV presenter began her career with BBC West in Bristol before teaming up with Nick Owen to host Central News in 1982 when ATV became Central Television.

A year later, she joined TV-am to replace Anna Ford and Angela Rippon, with Owen recommending her to the show’s director, Greg Dyke.

After eight years on the programme, presenting Good Morning Britain, she left to work at TV Weekly before rejoining Owen to host the BBC show Good Morning with Anne and Nick in 1992.

Since the millennium, Anne has been a regular on shows like The Wright Stuff and Jeremy Vine, where she also appeared as a presenter, and on Loose Women.

Anne joined GB News in 2022 to host the channel’s weekend breakfast show with Stephen Dixon, and will return to the role from next Saturday.