Alan Davies reveals early bladder cancer scare during promotion of new memoir

Alan Davies told ITV's Lorraine that a small but visible symptom led to the early detection and removal of a bladder tumour while he was writing his new autobiography, White Male Stand-Up.

The 59-year-old comedian said during the interview that he noticed blood in the toilet after urinating and rang his doctor immediately. "I am OK. That happened when I was writing the book, and there was a bit of blood in the toilet bowl after a wee," he said. "And you have to ring the doctor immediately and luckily they caught it early and I went in and I had a tumour and I had it removed. If I hadn't spotted it who knows. It was bladder cancer, but I was very lucky."

Davies's comments came as he discussed White Male Stand-Up, a follow-up to his 2020 memoir Just Ignore Him. In that earlier book he detailed years of sexual abuse by his father, which he says began after his mother died of leukaemia when he was six. Davies has described how the abuse, which he says occurred between the ages of eight and 13, contributed to struggles with alcohol and anger in adulthood.

He has said therapy helped him come to terms with his past and that he reported his father to the police in 2017. Authorities told him at the time that his father, then in his eighties and living with dementia in a care home, would not be able to stand trial. Davies has also described a degree of family estrangement following the report, saying his older brother stopped speaking to him and that some relatives preferred he had not spoken publicly about the abuse.

In interviews and in his writing, Davies has spoken about the long-lasting effects of keeping painful secrets. "Secrets and shame are terrible things to carry for a child," he told a guest host on Lorraine in 2021. He has emphasized that publishing his memoirs prompted others to speak to him about their own experiences, an outcome he said he hoped for when he decided to write about his childhood.

Davies told Lorraine that writing the new book helped him process recurring memories. "It took me a couple of years to write this and it felt like kind of extracting something and made something worthwhile," he said.

Bladder cancer develops when a tumour forms in the lining or muscle of the bladder. According to NHS figures cited by Davies's interviewers, about 10,200 new cases are diagnosed in the UK each year and roughly 81,400 in the United States. It is more common in men and is the 10th most common cancer in the UK. Symptoms can include blood in the urine, needing to urinate more often or urgently, and pelvic pain; unexpected weight loss and swelling of the legs can also be signs. Smoking and occupational exposure to certain chemicals increase risk. Treatment options depend on stage and may include surgery, radiotherapy and chemotherapy.

Davies has continued to work and to promote his new book while discussing both his recent health scare and the personal material he has set out in print. He spoke warmly of his mother in the Lorraine interview, saying she liked to laugh and suggesting her sense of humour may have shaped his own path into comedy. White Male Stand-Up follows his previous memoir in tracing the personal history that Davies says shaped his life and career.