Melvyn Bragg discusses mental health for healthtalk.org in 2015

Melvyn Bragg has lifted the lid on years of secret suffering due to ill health, which has left him “massively weaker” behind the scenes.

The 83-year-old creator of The South Bank Show originally kept his cancer diagnosis quiet.

However, he has now revealed in a new interview with the Radio Times that he too was struck down, and still has a “long hangover” as a result.

“I was very, very seriously ill for two and a half years. I lost an awful lot of weight,” the broadcaster lamented.

“I had some very bad cancers. I had one really terrible infection that nearly did for me,” he continued, adding that in between his bouts of illness, he suffered “something like pneumonia, and God knows what else”.

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“It just kept coming. It was retribution for having a profligate life, a reckoning,” he insisted.

“I still have a long hangover from it, as it were, but that’s not going to stop me from doing what I want to do,” he concluded adamantly.

Melvyn added that he understands and “admires” people who choose to go public when they receive a diagnosis.

“I think a lot of women will say, ‘Well, if Esther [Rantzen] can get through it, then so can I.’ And that matters [but in my case], I just didn’t want to talk about it,” he explained.

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However, he revealed that the news broke after others noticed that he “couldn’t go to places and couldn’t do things”.

“I can now – it’s getting better, but I’m massively weaker in terms of walking and getting tired in the evenings,” he added.

The exhaustion he’s suffered in recent times meant that there was no prospect of him flying all the way to California to David Hockney’s home near Mulholland Drive.

However, he’d filmed there previously, when he witnessed the “utterly dedicated” artist’s trajectory, which Melvyn says led to him becoming “America’s most famous painter”.

Inspired by his pal’s winning streak, he added: “I remember watching him and thinking, ‘I should work a lot harder at what I’m doing.’”

“He’s unique. One of the greatest painters of our time, full stop,” Melvyn praised.

While both creatives spent time in South London, Melvyn remained in the UK while David moved to the USA, despite intermittently returning to spend time in Yorkshire and paint his mum Laura’s portrait.

Read the full interview in this week’s Radio Times – out now

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