Victoria Derbyshire wrote ‘goodbye letter’ to sons before breast cancer surgery

BBC broadcaster Victoria Derbyshire has said she wrote letters to her young sons “in case I didn’t wake up” from a mastectomy in 2015.

The TV presenter spoke about her breast cancer diagnosis and treatment on an episode of podcast Happy Mum Happy Baby with host and “dear friend” Giovanna Fletcher, after the pair appeared on I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here! together in 2020.

Derbyshire told how her 11-year-old son Oliver said he was “angry” after she disclosed her diagnosis, while eight-year-old Joe later described it as a “stressful” time.

Speaking about her mastectomy, 56-year-old Derbyshire said: “I had this really weird anxiety, maybe it’s rational, that I wasn’t going to wake up after the anaesthetic so I wrote each of them a goodbye letter – in case I didn’t wake up.

“Obviously I was going to wake up, because a million people have anaesthetic every day and wake up, but that was the thing that was making me most nervous.

“It wasn’t losing a breast – that was fine, get the cancer out – but what if I don’t see my boys again.

“So I wrote them letters, which I put in my bedside drawer. Mark knew where they were in case that would happen.

“It was how much I love them, ‘and please remember your manners and will you make sure you’re kind to people’. All the stuff I say every day anyway, I just wanted it on paper, just so they’d have it.”

Derbyshire previously said it took just five days from suspecting she may have cancer to being diagnosed.

She documented her illness in a video diary as she went through chemotherapy, radiotherapy and a mastectomy.

After the diagnosis and treatment, Derbyshire married her long-time partner Mark Sandell.