Jeremy Vine: My midlife burn-out
Radio 2 presenter Jeremy Vine is happy to tackle almost any subject on his show — whether it’s his huge BBC salary or a health scare that’s troubling him.
Here, in the final exclusive extract from his memoirs, he talks about when he feared he had skin cancer, a bout of depression — and the life lessons that his small children have taught him . . .
Here's a question: what do you do when you look at your reflection and you see a mole you have never noticed before? Just after the whole Strictly madness came to a juddering halt, I stood naked in front of the bathroom mirror and noticed a deep brown freckle under my left collarbone.
The freckle was the size of the nail on your little toe. Not big, but had it been there before?
I spoke to the Radio 2 doctor, Sarah Jarvis. ‘You and I are at the very top of skin cancer risk in later life,’ advises Dr Jarvis, a red-head. ‘We have to watch for moles, freckles, anything unusual.’
‘When is later life?’ I ask.
‘It’s now!’ she tells me.
I knew not to panic immediately. I am very wary of diagnosing myself. Google has turned us all into amateur doctors, and I had already had a particularly embarrassing experience of what is called ‘cyberchondria’.
My Girls: Jeremy Vine pictured with his daughters Martha (right) and Anna
A year earlier, I’d felt a constant ache in a private area, which eased only at night. Like most blokes, I did not want to trouble my GP, so I typed a description of the pain and its location into Google — and found there were ‘nine possible conditions’ and ‘your symptoms should NEVER be ignored’.
After speed-reading more than 30 different web pages and poring over countless diagrams with coloured arrows and text boxes, I settled on what I was fairly sure was a rare illness called distal ureteral calculus with possible primary retroperitoneal seminoma.
I wrote an email to my GP describing my diagnosis:
‘I don’t want to waste your time and I know this requires quite complex surgery so would you be able to push on with booking the op for me as I am in quite a lot of pain, thanks.’
The GP, a charming woman called Dr Deirdre O’Gallagher, replied that it might be better if she was able to examine me first, as ‘this is the way we usually work’. Reluctantly I agreed, although my diagnosis seemed unshakeable and I knew I would need a three-hour operation.
A week later, just before I was due to see Dr O’Gallagher, I had to write her another email:
Dear Deirdre,
I feel I owe you an apology. Since using Google to diagnose myself, I have discovered that the culprit was six new pairs of pants that I was given for Christmas and which I had just started wearing.
Clearly they were too tight and were squeezing my private areas all day (which is why the ‘condition’ eased at night), and when I Googled the situation it said my symptoms should not be ignored or ‘death could result’.
I have since stopped wearing the undersized pants and the pain has completely gone. My apologies for this embarrassing situation.
Yours ever, Jeremy
Jeremy Vine is happy to tackle almost any subject on his show
Now, staring at my enlarged freckle in the mirror, I brought the pants incident to mind.
I did not want to jump the gun and assume the worst. I could not think of any innocent reason for a freckle to enlarge suddenly, but I would not rush to conclusions. This was one for Dr Jarvis, and it was a time to be calm, sensible and rational.
‘I’m scared,’ I told her.
‘Are you sure it’s larger?’ she asked.
‘It’s double the size. I have compared it with holiday photos.’
She said the key test was known as ABCDE: you should be alert to Asymmetry, Border irregularity, Colour that is not uniform, Diameter greater than 6mm (the size of the eraser on a pencil) and Evolving size, shape or shade.
My mole seemed to have some of the ABCDE qualities, but not others. She reassured me. I should keep it under review and we would talk again.
I now thought there could be an advantage to my programme. If it was a malignant melanoma, could we use it to educate our audience? I went to Phil Jones, the editor, and suggested a feature on the expanding freckle.
‘We could have a live biopsy,’ I said. A surgeon would remove the mole on air, then test it for cancer while the programme went out. Possibly the result could be announced between two records. The crazier the idea, the more likely Phil is to agree to it.
‘Let’s do it,’ he said. To get the ball rolling, I made a couple of announcements on the air.
Two days later, I stared at the freckle. To my surprise it had now reduced in size dramatically.
I stopped making the radio announcements and told Phil we should keep the situation under review. By the end of the week, the freckle was its normal tiny size.
It turned out that the fake tan which had been applied for the final show on Strictly had faded from every part of my body except that freckle, where for some reason the deep brown spray pooled in a semipermanent island around the existing blemish.
'On the subject of health scares, I started cycling to work when I was 45'
Two full weeks it had stayed there — long enough for me to nearly have the patch of fake tan sliced out and examined under a microscope live on Radio 2 — in an item which might well have turned out to be the most embarrassing in broadcast history.
On the subject of health scares, I started cycling to work when I was 45.
‘You need exercise, Jeremy,’ a doctor had told me. ‘You are in snipers’ alley right now.’
‘Snipers . . . what?’ I asked.
It begins when a person hits their mid-40s, he explained.
‘At that point the bullets start flying. People get taken out by all kinds of illnesses between 47 and 52.
‘It’s a dark and scary fiveyear corridor where, if a person is still behaving like they’re 25, all the wear and tear, all the stress and strain suddenly catch up with them.
‘But get through the alley without being hit,’ he went on confidently, ‘and you’re good for two or three decades.’
A glance at friends around me at the BBC in their 40s and 50s suggested he might well be right. Almost simultaneously, Andrew Marr had a stroke; Nick Robinson got a tumour on his lung; George Alagiah had bowel cancer. I heard gunshots myself but got off lightly.
In 2009, I suffered a dose of abject misery. An expert said it sounded like burnout. I walked round the corner from the BBC to Harley Street for a second opinion, where a psychologist with kindly eyes said I might need time off work. I responded: ‘No. Your job is to keep me working.’
As a result of that kind of idiocy, I wandered around for a long time as if wearing a gigantic blob of freshly spun candyfloss on my head. Nothing gave me pleasure.
'It's the maddening thing about life. You never learn the important stuff secondhand'
There is something powerfully comic about a radio presenter delivering a two-hour talk show to seven million people, then leaving the office and paying one person £120 to listen to him for a further 40 minutes.
In all, I spoke to seven different professionals. ‘I feel like Debenhams after a fire,’ I told one. ‘The entire store has burnt to the ground except the shop front.
‘There’s no stock, escalators, tills or staff. They’re all ashes. There are only the dummies in the shop window. That’s the last bit of me that exists; the bit at the front.’
‘The presenter,’ he said.
It might have been a midlife crisis. It certainly doesn’t compare with the brutal illnesses my friends suffered. But the whole business taught me a lesson — which is that misery can be positive.
Burnout is, I reckon, the body’s way of taking you off the battlefield before you suffer physical injury. In the instant that the evil gods of stroke and heart attack have decided you will be their next victim, you are suddenly crashed in bed and out of their clutches.
Misery is a circuitbreaker. It may not be tidy, but I would rather lie under my duvet staring into my own heart than be opened up on a trolley with surgeons doing the staring instead.
When I awoke one morning and knew I was better, I was overjoyed. I was through snipers’ alley. But the trough made me reflect. I began to realise what was really important in life.
You are lucky if you can laugh at stuff. I think I can. And I realised I am also lucky because I can still learn. Laughing and learning: the two most important things in life. Oh, and love. Make that three.
The third one is the biggest. Laughter and learning and love.
It's the maddening thing about life. You never learn the important stuff secondhand. You have to find it out for yourself.
Blokes often fail to grasp the simple stuff. One friend said to me: ‘Having a baby was easy. The trouble came at six months when it started moving about.’ Martha, our oldest, was born in 2004. Anna rolled up in 2006. I remember during an early run of new dad sleepless nights being a little impatient with a studio guest. The guy was with us to talk about how to buy a secondhand car.
'You are lucky if you can laugh at stuff. I think I can. And I realised I am also lucky because I can still learn'
At some point, early in the interview, he had said: ‘Jeremy, I think you and I will go on later to talk about a different issue, which is when the milometer on cars gets tampered with.’
I didn’t know my impatience had been noticed. But during a break he asked: ‘Out of interest, why did you roll your eyes when I said that?’ Apologetically I replied: ‘Sleepless nights caused by new baby making me grumpy. I’m so sorry.
‘But if you really want to know, it’s because, in broadcasting, there is no “later”. There is only now.’
‘I’ll remember that,’ he laughed. ‘There is no later. Lesson learned.’
When I rolled my eyes at that studio guest, I was touching a great truth about fatherhood without even realising: when you’re a father, there is only now.
Glued to the laptop screen and typing these words, I heard two cries of: ‘Come out here, Dad, we’re swimming!’
We are on holiday in France and our rented home has a pool at the back. The temperature is 34c. I mistakenly thought there was a spare hour after lunch to type. I dived into my paragraphs while Martha and Anna jumped into the pool. The next thing is that they decided I should join them.
So I shouted back from behind the shutters: ‘Later, girls!’
‘Come on, Dad! We’re out here now!’
‘Girls, I will swim with you later.’ I am not listening to my own advice.
Somewhere on my shelves is a book about being a dad. It is very thin but I’ve never read it. I skimmed the first page and it said something like: ‘You’re a busy guy. That’s why you’ve got this book.
‘But you’ve also got kids. If you are too busy to read it, just turn to page 68 and read the single line there. That’s all you need to remember.’
On page 68, there was the one sentence: ‘The slower day will never arrive’.
KAPOW! So insightful.
Through the faces of our children we understand that ‘later’ sounds too much like ‘never’. The opposite of love is ‘not now’. So I am off to the pool. I am going now. There is no later.
What I Learnt: What My Listeners Say — And Why We Should Take Notice by Jeremy Vine is published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson, £18.99.
To order a copy for £15.19 (a 20 per cent discount), visit mailbookshop.co.uk or call 0844 571 0640. P&P is free on orders over £15. Offer valid until August 26, 2017.
The day I rumbled Boris's naughty little secret
With four minutes to go, Boris Johnson ran in. It was an awards ceremony at the Hilton, Park Lane, a couple of years before he became Mayor of London. He was due to make a funny speech. In four minutes.
There I was, sitting with a table-load of London bankers at an event named something like the International Securitisation Awards (I was going to hand out the prizes), when, WHOOSH, a rush of wind from an open door, a golden mop, a heave of body on to the chair next to mine, and the breathless question: ‘Jeremy, where exactly am I?’
‘The Securitisation Awards,’ I tell him.
‘Right-ho,’ he said. ‘Who is speaking?’
‘You are, Boris.’
‘Good God!’ he cried. ‘When?’
Jeremy Vine recalls a meeting with Boris Johnson at the 'International Securitisation Awards'
‘Um, pretty much now.’
‘OK, first up, what is securitisation?’
Nervous laughter. A man from one of the big Far East banks tries to explain. Boris is staring at him. He asks for a piece of paper.
Someone produces the reverse side of the menu. He puts it on his thigh, beneath the tablecloth.
‘Anyone got a pen?’ he says. ‘Quick!’ The future Foreign Secretary begins to write what looks like a plan for the speech. It is now past 9.30. This is going to be a catastrophe.
Looking at the piece of paper, I could make out a handful of words amid the scrawl. The first was, in capitals: SHEEP. Below it, another: SHARK.
I heard the announcement. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Boris Johnson to the stage.’ Applause.
I noticed he had left his notes on the table. Horror! Should I run up with them? No, it would be too obvious.
‘Ladies and gentlemen — errrrrr,’ he began. Boris had the look of a man who had been dragged out of a well by his ankles. His blond hair seemed to spring vertically from his head as he embarked on some opening remarks.
‘Errrrrr . . . welcome to the International . . . errrrrr.’ This was terrible. He had forgotten which event he was at.
Johnson then did a crazy thing. To find out where he was, he very obviously turned around and looked at the large logo at the back of the stage.
‘. . . to the International Securatisation Awards! YES!’ he cried triumphantly.
This brought the house down. There was a huge cheer. Everybody realised this was not going to be a normal speech. Chaos had descended, we were in it, and we were going to enjoy it.
‘SHEEP,’ he began, and started a story about his uncle’s farm, and how outrageous it was that they couldn’t bury animals that had died, as they did in the 1960s, because of EU regulations that an abattoir had to be involved.
'Since then, we have all seen Boris’s progression. MP, then mayor, then cabinet minister. Very nearly Prime Minister'
‘One died today. A SHEEP.’ The occasional word, not always the obvious one, was shouted at double volume. ‘And my uncle had to RING a fellow at the abattoir. His name was Mick. No, Jim. No, sorry, MARGARET. That was it. MARGARET.’
People were not just roaring with laughter, but listening.
‘Which is why my political hero is the mayor from JAWS.’ Laughter. ‘Yes. Because he KEPT THE BEACHES OPEN.’
More guffawing. He spoke as if each new thought came as a surprise.
‘Yes. He REPUDIATED, he FORSWORE and he ABROGATED all these silly regulations on health and safety and declared that people should SWIM! SWIM!’
He is brilliant. The whole room is cheering. It no longer matters that Boris has no script, no plan. I realise that I am in the presence of genius.
He rounds off his speech with a story that ends in three parts. He tells us the first and second bits.
‘And thirdly, because . . .’ he says. Boris has stopped. There is silence. ‘I am terribly sorry, everyone. I have forgotten the third reason . . .’ It brings the house down. He has spent five minutes telling this story, and forgotten the punchline. I’ve never seen anything like it.
F inally he says: ‘Right-ho. Jeremy VINE is here and he will be presenting the (looks behind him again) International Securitisation Awards.’ Cheering, because he’s said the name a second time. Laughter. Applause.
I did something I had never done before — ditched all the funny things I had planned to say in my own speech. I had been completely blown off stage.
Around 18 months after that marvellous night, I arrived at an awards ceremony for a totally different industry. I cannot recall whether it was concrete or chiropractors, but once again I had done my research and brought my script.
‘Is anyone else speaking?’ I asked.
‘Boris Johnson,’ the organiser said.
He arrived seven minutes before he was due to speak. ‘Jeremy, what is this . . . ?
Others helped. Did they have a pen? Paper? I watched, fascinated, as Boris wrote ‘SHEEP’ in a barely legible scrawl.
Then he was on . . . Mesmerising again.
Since then, we have all seen Boris’s progression. MP, then mayor, then cabinet minister. Very nearly Prime Minister.
Watching him, I have often remembered those two speeches. For me, they pose the fundamental question that concerns you when you listen to any politician: Is this guy for real?
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