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‘Needs keeping an eye on,’ the former ‘One Show’ host said
Jacob StolworthyFriday 05 December 2025 04:44 GMTComments
CloseMole Checking: Recognising The Signs Of Skin Cancer
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Adrian Chiles has revealed he’s undergone an operation to remove a cancerous patch of skin from his shoulder.
The TV presenter’s diagnosis arrived after he spotted a suspicious skin patch, which a biopsy later confirmed to be cancerous.
In his column for The Guardian, Chiles said that he got his shoulder checked by a dermatologist, who told him to have it removed.
He said it was confirmed to be a squamous cell carcinoma, a type of skin cancer caused by an overproduction of squamous cells in the top layer of the skin.
“All removed and won’t spread,” the former host of The One Show said, adding: “So not nothing, but not serious. Needs keeping an eye on.”
Chiles wrote that he was initially left concerned when the dermatologist told him he would receive his results in the mail.
“I suggested that, if cancer was a possibility, then a bit of hurry-up might be called for, to which he said: ‘Oh, it won’t make any difference now. The only thing that would have made any difference was if you’d come sooner.’ To me, this sentence argued against itself somewhat.”
He continued: “Time was either of the essence, or it wasn’t. I even flirted with the idea of interpreting ‘won’t make any difference now’ as his way of saying I was doomed anyway.”
After being told he would get his results via app on 18 December, he ended up making contact with a skin cancer nurse he could actually speak to, as he believes the app “masquerades as communication”.
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“Communication is either two-way or it’s nothing,” he wrote.
Adrian Chiles has had a cancerous cell removed from his shoulder (Getty)There are two types of skin cancer: melanoma, the deadliest form, of which around 13,000 new cases are diagnosed each year in the UK, and non-melanoma, of which there are more than 100,000 new cases diagnosed every year.
Chiles, who previously hosted The Apprentice: You’re Fired! and football coverage on ITV Sport, has opened up about his health numerous times over the years. He spoke out about his drinking habit in a 2018 documentary titled Drinkers Like Me.
The TV star discovered he was drinking up to 100 units a week, and a doctor told him he had signs of liver damage, which prompted him to moderate his drinking.
Speaking about how his booze intake used to affect his Christmas experience, the broadcaster said: “I’d do all the cooking and would be eating as I cooked, then go to the pub for a couple of pints at lunchtime, then start drinking wine. By four to five o’clock, I would be absolutely stuffed and all foggy with booze. I’d doze off in front of the telly – where’s the enjoyment in that?
“I can’t stress how much more enjoyment I get out of it now for drinking less of it.”
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