Hello and welcome to the political party. Now this episode is a little bit different. It's brought to you in partnership with Cancer Research UK and the whole episode is about

cancer. But don't worry, we are seeing the lighter side of it, as well as exploring the very

serious side. But this is so much fun. Earlier this week, Cancer Research UK brought together me,

Richard Herring and Mark Steele, three comedians with a few things in common, including, most importantly, our shared

experience of having had cancer. And we had such a great fun chat about this. And we shared

stories about our initial diagnosis to the different treatments we needed and how that

affected us. And there are, as you would expect, so many funny moments along the way, and we are all

relishing each other's recovery. You will know Richard and Mark, of course. Richard is the host of

the Leicester Square Theatre podcast, a phenomenal comedian and prolific, one of my favourite

stand-ups to watch. He got testicular cancer and he wrote a book about it. Can I

have my ball back? Which was brilliant. He did a tour about the same name, which was superb.

And Mark Steele, you'll know, from so much of his work on Radio 4 in television, a phenomenal

satirical comedian, but a funny comedian anyway, even when he's not doing his fantastic satire.

He and I were diagnosed around the same time,

and we'd start to get to know each other a little bit more

by pure chance in the run-up to those diagnoses.

So we messaged each other a lot throughout,

and he really helped me, really helped me through that.

And I think at different times,

we probably thought the other one was worse off,

and in a way,

that kind of helped us. We're also joined by Dr. Sam Godfrey, who's the Science Engagement Lead

...