As the nation went into lockdown in 2020, TV comedian Richard Herring thought: “This would be a really bad time to get cancer.” Then he did.
The 55-year-old stand-up remembers sitting down on his bed one day and noticing his right testicle felt different. By the autumn it definitely looked to be getting larger, heavier and harder.
“It was concerning me, it felt a bit different,” he recalls. “It seemed to be getting a bit bigger.”
Yet he didn’t seek medical help immediately. “It was partly male reticence and living in denial, not wanting to face up to it,” he says. “It’s that stereotypical thing of not thinking something like this is going to happen to you.
“Every other time I’d been ill it had turned out to be nothing or treatable.
“There was no pain, no blood, no lack of function in that area.”
But within a few months, by January 2021, the testicle had grown to the size of a Kinder egg. So Richard and wife Catie, 41, agreed he should see his GP.
“It was big… I could just sense there was something going on,” he says. “The feel of it wasn’t right.”
Testicular cancer typically affects younger men and although his doctor thought the swelling was probably due to a common infection called epididymitis, they sent Richard for an ultrasound scan.
It revealed a potentially cancerous six-centimetre growth inside the testicle. Richard, dad to Ernie, four, and Phoebe, seven, broke down in tears.
“That was the moment that it hit me. Hearing my son laughing in the next room was overwhelming.
“It was the first time in my life I realised that this could be it. It made me realise how much I didn’t want to die. I wanted to be there for my kids.”
Doctors recommended the testicle was removed so, at the end of February, Richard had the operation. “I was scared I wouldn’t wake up,” he admits.
Thankfully all went smoothly and, apart from some soreness, recovery was quick. Tests confirmed the growth was cancerous, but that the disease hadn’t spread.
“I’d been lucky it was found early,” he says. “I elected to have one shot of chemotherapy, which massively increases your chances of it not returning.”
The comic’s reaction to the treatment was mild, apart from nausea and fatigue. He opted not to have a prosthetic testicle fitted as he thought it felt “ridiculous”, but did worry about his love life.
“You think, ‘am I ever going to be able to get an erection…will I be less of a man?’ The sexual function side was concerning me a little bit.”
Now he’s written an amusing memoir called Can I Have My Ball Back? about his ordeal.
“The only power you have over these inevitable, terrible things is your ability to find what’s funny in them,” he says, though he admits, “I’ve got a little bit of post-traumatic stress [from] coping with the fear it could come back. It’s not all laughs.”
Richard has since changed his lifestyle, shedding a stone, giving up drinking, cutting down on sugar and running a half marathon.
“In the long run, it might be [getting cancer] prolongs my life because I’m living generally more healthily.”
Richard discovered 98 per cent of testicular cancer patients survive for five years or more – but he urges men to act quickly.
“If something changes, just go to the GP.”
Can I Have My Ball Back? A Memoir of Masculinity, Mortality and My Right Testicle by Richard Herring is out now (£20, Sphere).
