Sue Perkins, the comedian and co-host of The Great British Bake Off on BBC2, has revealed that she has been living with a brain tumour for the past eight years. The broadcaster said the benign growth, which is on her pituitary gland, was found during tests which she underwent as part of another BBC show, Supersizers.
In an interview with Good Housekeeping magazine, she said: “I was at a point where I was spending so much of my life doing TV that I only found out about my real life through a television procedure.”
“I’m lucky that it’s benign so it’s not in itself a worrying thing. Sometimes it’s big and makes me mad, and sometimes it’s small and is in the background. Sometimes it screws up my hormones. I have various tests now to make sure the side effects aren’t too onerous.”
Perkins, 45, who is in a relationship with the Channel 4 presenter Anna Richardson, also talked about how the tumour prevented her from having children due to its impact on the secretion of reproductive hormones.
“We live in a time and place where we think everything is possible,” she said. “I don’t know if I would have gone on to have children. But as soon as someone says you can’t have something, you want it more than anything,” she said.
Perkins made headlines last month after she confronted the culture secretary, John Whittingdale, over the government’s plans to make cuts to the BBC’s funding.
Born in London, Perkins began achieving television success in the 1990s alongside her presenting partner, Mel Giedroyc, and has worked in recent years on a number of solo projects, including documentaries on art, history and geography. She collaborated with the food critic Giles Coren for the Supersizers series, which involves experiencing food from a variety of historical periods.
