Veteran broadcaster James Whale has moved into a hospice as he enters the final chapter of his courageous five-year battle against kidney cancer. The Daily Express columnist, who has been living with 20 tumours around his body, including in his spine, brain and lungs, has been told he has just weeks to live.
Earlier this week, he moved into a “quiet and welcoming” eight-bed hospice near his home in Kent with his second wife Nadine Lamont-Brown at his side. The mixture of cancer and the painkillers he is on has made him breathless and affected his famous voice – so familiar to listeners after a 52-year career in broadcasting.
“I’m comfortable and they’re looking after me brilliantly,” James told the Express. “Obviously I feel very sad, especially for Nadine and my family. I wish I could talk better so I could do another show. I’d like to do one more podcast if possible. But I’m very breathless and it’s difficult to talk.”
James and Nadine have been movingly documenting his cancer struggle weekly with endless stoicism and good humour, with advice and tips for other patients and their families, via Tales of the Whales. He added that he was missing the couples’ dogs, but wanted to continue writing his usual Monday column for the Daily Express for as long as he could.
Earlier this month, the 74-year-old conducted his last broadcast interview for TALK, speaking to his old friend, Reform leader Nigel Farage, in the garden of his Kent home. The interview made national headlines when Farage told James he thought he was on track with his insurgent and rapidly growing political party to become the UK’s next prime minister.
“James, we have a chance of doing something genuinely historic, really genuinely historic, and there’s momentum out there, there’s an optimism out there,” Farage told him. “They’re gonna throw everything they’ve got at us but I think we’re going to do it and I’m certainly not even contemplating failure.”
Doctors stopped treatment for James’ stage-four kidney cancer several months ago after devastatingly admitting there was nothing more they could do.
Nadine told the Express: “James is comfortable and being well looked after and that’s as much as we can hope for. I know he’d love to be on the radio talking about this but he’s just not up to it at the moment sadly.”
James, one of the pioneers of talk radio after first inviting listeners on air at Metro Radio, Newcastle, in the mid-seventies, first beat kidney cancer in 2000 after being given a 50% chance of survival, but revealed five years ago that the disease had returned, spreading to his brain, lungs and spine.
Last year he was made an OBE for services to broadcasting and charity.
