Comedian Rhod Gilbert has talked in detail about his cancer and his plans for the future, which includes gigs at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.
The Welsh stand-up appeared in a short film at part of the National Comedy Awards Stand Up To Cancer special broadcast on Channel 4.
Gilbert revealed that he has been undergoing treatment for head and neck cancer. He has been treated at the Velindre Cancer Centre in Cardiff, where, he noted with irony, he is a patron.
He is due to do a short work-in-progress run at the Edinburgh Fringe in August. Ticket details here.
And he hopes to lead a fundraising trek to Morocco in October.
In the C4 video he explained that he had been a patron of the Velindre Centre in Cardiff for a decade and then became ill on a fundraising trip in Cuba. "So imagine my surprise when I was diagnosed with cancer... because I thought I'd have lifelong immunity!"
"I had a sore throat and I couldn't speak and I couldn't breathe and I was postponing and cancelling tour shows and I had terrible spasms in my face and a lot of tightness in the muscles. It turns out after a biopsy of this lump in my neck that I have something called head and neck cancer. Cancer of the head sounded pretty serious. He joked that he went away a patron of the Velindre Centre and came back a patient.
"So before I knew it, I was having surgery. I was in daily sessions of radiotherapy and chemotherapy."
He explained that his facial hair was growing back and he was getting back to his previous weight. He hopes to lead the cancer centre's fundraising trek to Mount Toubkal, in Morocco's Atlas Mountains, in October.
"I'm a little way off that at the moment, but I am feeling optimistic and weirdly feeling really happy and really positive."
