I am a confirmed republican but I felt genuinely upset for the bloke. Groomed for a job for his entire life, his Mum could have retired years ago and given him a decent run at it but felt impelled to hang on til the very end. And in less than a year since his coronation … this.
Charlie and the big C
by 117 Comments
Perhaps he should try homeopathy, seeing as he’s so keen for NHS money to be spent on it.
Bit political, bit political …
Fight the power my dudes ✊
A life threatening ailment tends to test convictions on that front.
Unless your surname is Jobs
In fairness to Brian, I’m sure he probably will try homeopathy and the rest of the unproven alternative remedies he believes in.
While I wish him a speedy and full recovery, I hope he doesn’t end up being one of those people who:
* Undergo month-after-month of cutting edge therapies only to claim they were cured by a regular infusion of squirrel semen smoothies.
* Poo-poo modern medicine in favor of woo-woo bullshit as did legendary US comedian Andy Kaufman
When I was diagnosed with cancer I was surprised how many otherwise sane and rational people I know had pet ‘cures’, the aunt who was cured by the power of broccoli and turmeric alone, the friend who refused chemo and recovered by meditation and avoiding all sugar etc.
Same here – “They’ll only kill you in there – take Tumeric and you’ll be fine”
Pretty sure broccoli actually gives you cancer.
I was eating broccoli all wrong until I learned it’s the stems that have a pleasantly sweet, nutty flavour; the florets are basically acrid rat droppings. These days, I cut off the heads and bin them before lightly steaming the diagonally sliced stems (I’m a master of diagonal slicing) in the rice steamer basket with a slice of filleted river fish, over the rice. I wish I’d known this earlier. So many wasted years.
No, you misheard. Brockley gives you cancer.
*punches Moosey playfully in chest*
Whilst I don’t wish it on anyone, R4 news yesterday was “75 year old man has cancer”, but the lead story this morning was “PM sends 75 year old man wishes for a speedy recovery”. I turned it off. Isn’t that what TwiXer is for?
I thought “75 year old man has troublesome prostate” last week was bad enough.
Surely there must be some more important news in the world?
“Dear Feedback…”
Oh, come now, Steve – naive!
Most of the population seem obsessed with Royalty stories – the news outlets are just catering to that obsession.
I’m not one of the most… I was grateful for the extra Coronation Bank Holiday, but stayed in the garage and avoided TV and radio for the duration.
Me neither – but I’m not shocked or stunned by the wall-to-wall coverage…
Like all my fellow Daily Mail readers and Piers Morgan fans, I’m hoping and praying that that traitor Harry puts aside his differences with our wonderful King upon hearing this awful news and they make up. I see the hashtag #CeasefireNow! is trending on X, thanks presumably to so many people feeling the same.
I’m sure the residents of Gaza and Ukraine are all sending thoughts and prayers.
Pierce M’Organ – nominative determinism for someone who seems to relish self-inflicted wounds.
This is a good joke.
Go on then. You can’t just say “this is a good joke” and then stop typing.
I’ve watched some very funny interviews with Piers. I don’t like calling people thick, but boy is he thick. That he fluked his way to a successful career is one of life’s many mysteries. His interview with Richard Dawkins, for example, is very funny. Whatever you think of Dawkins, I love that throughout the interview he maintains the polite smile of a bemused anthropologist mildly curious about the simplicity of the specimen in front of him. Morgan’s interview on gun control with Ben Shapiro almost had me agreeing with Shapiro. Now I see he’s bet Sunak that he won’t be able to ditch some people out of Britain’s proverbial boat before the election. (With the winner paying £1,000 to a refugee charity. So it’s swings and roundabouts.)
No gun should be controlled anywhere near Piers Morgan.
Say what you like about Piers Morgan…
No really, say what you like. The man’s an arse.
Similar sentiments here Junior. I see little benefit / value in a monarchy these days but this is sad stuff. Yes, he’ll get treatment at a speed that many of his subjects will can only dream of, but that’s not of his doing.
I get to read the Financial Times coverage and they didn’t give the story undue prominence. However they’ve had to close the comments section as the burden of moderating out the vile comments appearing was obviously getting out of hand.
Anyone getting cancer is sad news.
A man potentially only getting to be king for a few years is not.
Meanwhile, in happier news:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-surrey-68214536
@fentonsteve
Not such great news for the billions of us who don’t live in Spelthorne
I do live in Spelthorne and I am ecstatic.
Sympathetic to anyone with Big C but although he seems to have some decent inclinations I’ve never quite got past the stories about him dropping his clothes on the floor (because he has someone to pick them up) and losing his rag when the lacky hasn’t squeezed the toothpaste onto his brush properly.
Yes but we’ve all done that.
Ri-ight – like you know what toothpaste is.
Of course I do. You’re not the only one with a favourite sandwich y’know.
Someone in my house drops his dirty washing on the floor. Is there any chance Offspring the Younger could be future a monarch?
Harry Fenton and the Half-Speed Prince.
Oh I say! Well done!
And there goes today’s tea.
Very true, I have one of those too.
Do we have any data on the current monarch’s previous behaviour relating to the washing up of his air fryer?
He insisted on the whole thing being polished with the silverware by the silverwear-polisher johnny.
A new post was created.
Master of The King’s Air Fryer.
A well-bred posh chap of Brian’s acquaintence was appointed to the role. He’s merely required to supervise the cleaning of said object by a menial.
Why are we calling him Brian all of sudden? Where’d that come from?
(I noticed Jaygee did same earlier, but I just assumed he was drunk.)
Private Eye passim – assuming your question wasn’t “ironic”.
Her late Majesty also known as Brenda…
I’d heard “Brenda” (here, probably). Never come across “Brian” before.
@moose-the-mooche
“Never come across Brian before.”
I’m Brian and so is my beeeatch
I bet TJ leaves his discarded guitar strings lying around where the Hoover will ingest them and die, too.
I carefully coil my old guitar strings and repack them before filing them in my guitar toolbox where they will stay undisturbed until the heat death of the universe.
One the one hand I think if we must have a monarch, which wouldn’t be my preferred option, you might as well have a monarch who behaves like one. On the other this sort of nonsense makes me question the judgement of those who sincerely think there is something special about this family.
Anyway, I wish him well and am glad that his openness about his prostate condition has apparently caused men who might otherwise have kept their concerns to themselves to get checked out.
Completely agree with your second paragraph – it was worth being more open for that result alone.
Yes, that’s one thing in his favour. Which reminds me, AWers over 50 (yes, that’s nearly all of us), when’s the last time you did “poo sticks”? It’s probably about time to delight your GP once more.
It used to be over 60s who received them automatically in England, but the age is being brought down. I received a poo stick pack to send off when I reached 56 last year, and can apparently look forward to receiving them every two years until I’m 74 (after which I would have to request them).
I’ve recently gone from every three months to every six but, following the retirement of my consultant, new bloke has requested an Up Persicope. I haven’t had one for seven years (although it feels like last week). What larks!
I was thinking that I haven’t had a pack for ages the other day.
I do miss the six windows of pooh though (I usually did). But admittedly the pooh sticks are easier to use.
…..worst Advent calendar ever.
In Oz every person over 50 gets sent a test kit. You do your business literally and send the vial of in a pre addressed free postage envelope and a few weeks later get your result.
I think it’s 50 in Scotland too. See my reply above for the position in England.
It’s a shit business…
As a career goes working in that lab I reckon you end up just going through the motions.
Staff need to be careful what they say and do in case a stool pigeon does them in to the management
I’ve never heard of this. What do they expect to find in your excrement?
A data dump?
Traces of blood that could be an early indicator of bowel cancer, though the accompanying material is full of reassurances that even positive tests are more likely to be piles or something else less serious https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/bowel-cancer-screening/
There’s also Calprotectin, which can indicate IBD or colorectal cancer, although it isn’t screened for initially.
https://www.southtees.nhs.uk/services/pathology/tests/calprotectin/
Muggles will score less than 50, I was above 600 (the upper limit of the test) when I was first diagnosed. I think I glowed in the dark.
Every 6 months for me. Thankfully my last colonoscopy a few weeks ago showed little of concern
I have had 4 poo tests – the third suggested I needed further investigation. Cue 3 weeks of sleepless nights until a colonoscopy that was quick and painless and thankfully gave me the all clear.
Get yourself checked out folks.
I’m soon to have my third, or fourth, or possibly fifth – I’ve lost count. To be honest, I find the day before (‘prep’ i.e. purge) much worse than the procedure.
Whatever they find, it’s better to know, ‘cos then it can be treated.
Yeah the prep ain’t much fun. Probably close to double figures for me.
In Canada it is recommended for all over 50 every 5 years assuming otherwise in good health, not sure what the recommendation in the UK is.
Allegedly, as a trial, the whole testing department had to supply their own stool samples for a once over. You should’ve seen their faeces.
Well, scat’s life!
In old Blighty we just smear it on the envelope and pop it in the mail.
Enough about letters to the editor etc
As Alfred Austin is alleged to have written on the illness of the prince of Wales soon to be king Edward the something.
“Across the wires the electric message came: / He is no better, he is much the same.”
Why does everyone call it “the big C”; chances are it is one of the smaller cs. Cancer is not one disease, it is a mass of separate manifestations of a similar process, varying from quickly fatal and incurable to hardly worth treating, with the abilities to treat somewhere between 0 and 100%, with increasingly more up the higher end of that range.
Lord knows quite what he’s got, but, given the neck of the woods under scrutiny, my moneys on something felt up his bum, so presenting probably early, and choppable, or in his bladder. Unless very late, that latter is usually a simple matter of regular scopes and scrapes. And you can bet they won’t cancel, forget or delay his follow up appts.
I was interested in the phrase “a form of cancer.” I’m guessing myeloma.
That was my immediate thought, too – my stepdad had that. Spoiler alert: he died.
My father had similar. In hospital for a knee replacement and when he had trouble urinating after catheter removal they found high grade prostatic cancer. Upon having an ultrasound in preparation for prostate radiotherapy they found a lump on his bowel which turned out to be high grade metastatic cancer., caught before it could do much mischief. So went in for a knee op and finished up six months later in fine health minus a few other bits.. Leukaemia got him a decade later, but my god are we grateful for that extra decade.
My Dad said “ the trouble with doctors is they look for stuff / find stuff”.
Needless to say he died from a disease that he might not have but for late and incorrect early diagnosis thanks to him finding a lazy doctor and basically bullshitting to him.
Charlie and the Big C – Even for Roald Dahl, this was a dark children’s book.
Bravo! That did make me laugh.
James and the Giant Goitre was bad enough.
Harry and the Huge Throbbing Hemorrhoid made for even more uncomfortable reading
The Big Fucking Gallstone
The Fantastic Mr Fucked?
Tales of the Unexpected Lump
Yeah but obv they can all be sorted by George’s Marvellous Medicine.
(Blushes)
This the Most Quickly Scrolled Through Thread Of All Time. You guys putting sticks up your bums. ^shudder*
I don’t think you’ve checked how it works.
However I bet you’re glad I didn’t produce an AI image of your imaginings.
I think it’s more a case of wishful thinking than willful ignorance
Not quite, HP. I know it’s a long time since you’ve been in the UK, so this is how the NHS works nowadays…
We all dip our sticks in our, um, samples, then line up on Putney bridge and launch them into the Thames.
First one to make it to Tower bridge in announced the winner, scooped from the water and taken to Barts for testing.
👏 👏 👏
A warm hand for Fenton…
I’ve been on a low-fibre diet for a decade, so mine are more Submarine than Floater.
Wouldn’t FS’s post be better suited to the Sandwich thread?
Parting on the wrong side, so obviously a discreet selfie taken reflected off a mirror.
That looks excellent, Milky.
If that’s a 7″ picture disc, I dread to think what the B-side picture is, and where the spindle hole appears.
I believe that is an image from his wedding night. I could be wrong.
Oh I say.
Ha, with all the publicity, I learnt that Kings Physician is an erstwhile chum of mine. An engagingly bonkers old Etonian, with a distressing penchant for bow ties. Quite the enigma, astonishingly bright and astute, despite, at the same time as being the successful chair of a worthy organisation I was involved with, he is a bit of a champion for homeopathy. Which means King and he share something more than 4 inches of finger.
It’s not the size of one’s finger that counts, it’s how one uses it
You know what they say: big fingers = er, big gloves
Hopefully with lots of wriggle room (if you get my drift)
‘A bow tie is a signal to the rest of the world that the wearer can no longer attain an erection’ – David Sedaris
Think about any other outfit involving a bow tie and consider how sexless the wearer is. It’s pretty foolproof. Has any man, dinner suit and black tie excepted, ever looked hot wearing a bow tie?
If I knew how to embed photos, you would be seeing Mike Reid in a chilling Eastenders scene when he “surprises” Pat.
Wish…. command.
Er…thanks!
The arm positions may or may not indicate that there’s some self-enhancement business going on “down there”. The image is jiggling up and down, which leads us to believe that yes, he’s definitely wanking. Or is he just laughing? The facial expression fails to resolve this intriguing, Giacondan enigma.
The Nation of Islam want a word…
Wonder if the Corsair Chicken in JW’s hamper comes with a Royal Warrant
I am expecting a homeopathic remedy for gastro complaints at the very least.
…and an old Etonian to retrieve the chicken
The Keeper of the Royal Vomitive, a position dating back to the reign of King George Ii
It goes back much further when a vomotive offering would grace the temple steps of Zeus at Olympia after several libations of retsina had been imbibed. The priests would regularly clean the steps to ensure that more offerings were proffered after μια νύχτα στα πλακάκια
Charlie’s got dyslexia?