INTERVIEW
Since having a mastectomy, TV presenter Julia Bradbury has overhauled her lifestyle to minimise the chance of her cancer returning – and a key part of her new regime is embracing the outdoors
Julia Bradbury’s fans always felt as if they knew her. She was the indestructible, outdoorsy one on TV usually found in a cagoule and hiking boots, with a slab of millionaire’s shortbread in one hand, an Ordnance Survey map in the other.
In the past year, however, viewers have seen a very different side to the star, a former BBC Countryfile presenter. Julia has been filmed at her most vulnerable in hospital, at home weeping in desolation and – acareer first – has taken her top off to reveal her breasts on screen.
The 53-year-old was diagnosed with breast cancer in July 2021 and underwent a single mastectomy the following October. In awardwinning ITV documentary Julia Bradbury: Breast Cancer & Me, she allowed cameras to follow her before and after the operation to remove an aggressive, six-centimetre tumour. ‘You cannot hear the words, “You have cancer” without thinking, “I’m going to die,”’ says the mother of three today. ‘It makes you confront your own mortality and all the things you might lose. Like most people I had this naive self-belief, I didn’t ever think it would be me. I felt invincible and it was devastating to discover I wasn’t.
‘Telling my little ones “Mummy has cancer” is one of the hardest things I have ever had to do. You can’t go through all that mentally and physically and not be changed by it. I see my life now as being in two halves, before cancer and after.’
Julia looks fantastically well, sitting in the back garden of her London home, under a canopy of trees. She’s wearing sports kit, having just completed her daily exercise session following a healthy breakfast.
It’s a stark contrast to her previous mad dashes to a TV set fuelled by bacon butties, biscuits and sweet coffee. ‘I’ve learned a lot of life lessons since my diagnosis and one of them is that if you don’t make time for your health, you will have to make time for your illness,’ she admits ruefully.
‘I always thought my lifestyle was healthy-ish, but I was skating by on small amounts of sleep and multi-tasking. It took cancer for me to re-evaluate how I was living and working. It was all too much, I was too busy. Looking back now, I ask myself if that’s partly what made me vulnerable to breast cancer.’
Her response has been a two-year quest to learn how to live more healthily, making lifestyle changes that reduce the risk of her cancer returning. The presenter, who is the face of ITV’s Britain’s Best Walks, has now written a book, Walk Yourself Happy, in which she shares her knowledge abou
