In 2022 beloved Welsh comedian Rhod Gilbert faced a significant health challenge when he was diagnosed with head and neck cancer. The 56-year-old’s journey was documented in a Channel 4 documentary titled Rhod Gilbert: A Pain in the Neck, which received high praise.
October of 2023 saw Rhod receive the all-clear and shortly after he returned to touring with his latest show, Rhod Gilbert & The Giant Grapefruit. The show is coming to Cardiff’s Utilita Arena in 2025. Discussing his upcoming tour with Cardiff Life Magazine, Rhod said: “The show keeps evolving, keeps changing and I think I’m enjoying it more than any other show I’ve done in the past.”
As to why that is, he explained: “It’s partly just being alive and being out there and back to work. I’ve got a bit of a bounce post-cancer. I feel like I’m doing something really meaningful and important. It feels like I’m getting awareness of cancer out there. We’re raising money for Cancer Research, and Velindre on the tour, and it just feels like I’m doing something worthwhile. I want it to be funny and stand-up and every bit as funny as anything I’ve done in the past but it is about something very serious and dark.”
Rhod described how upon delving into subjects more serious than anything he’s done before, he was “really anxious”. He added: “It is a difficult subject to do stand-up about. The response to my documentary and the response to the humour in it was so positive that it gave me a bit of confidence going in to do stand up about cancer. I was still apprehensive, you know, and I still make a big deal in the show about, you know, a sort of trigger warning going, ‘Look, I’m going to be going there. I’m going to be talking about cancer.’
“I’ve got cancer patients in the audience, I’ve got people looking after cancer patients, families of cancer patients. I’ve got people who’ve lost people to cancer, possibly very recently. I’ve had people who have lost people that week and have still come to the show.
“I’m trying to empower people, and I’m trying to spread the word. I was nervous about it, but the overwhelming response, especially from cancer patients and their families, is so positive that gives me the confidence to carry on doing it.”
Rhod’s cancer, head and neck, is the eighth most common form of cancer overall in the UK. About 12,500 new cases are diagnosed each year, according to Cancer Research UK. About 4,000 people die from it annually.
The comedian, who was born in Carmarthen, described connecting with his audience as a “shared experience”. He elaborated: “In the show [cancer] is a shared experience. Having said that, it’s a shared experience as a society because it’s everywhere. It touches virtually everybody so hopefully this show is something that everyone can relate to. This is not just a stand-up show, it’s therapy for cancer patients and families.”
Despite his excitement to return to the stage, Rhod admitted that it was far from his “end goal” during his cancer journey. Instead, he said his end goal was to “get through it hour by hour”. “I had initial surgery and then started chemo and radiotherapy every day, and it was a question of getting through the next few minutes or the next hour or the next couple of hours,” he said. “To be honest with you it was about, ‘How am I going to go to the toilet? How am I going to eat? How am I going to get upstairs? How am I going to get to the hospital today?’
“I didn’t write a word of stand-up the whole time. It didn’t occur to me to do stand-up again. No, you’re just getting through it. You’re just focused on, not so much surviving, but getting through the next hour, getting through the next half-an-hour.”
Following his ordeal Rhod said he has been surprised to learn that he is far more “positive” than he initially thought. “I don’t see myself as a very positive, glass-full sort of person. Having said that, if you look at the facts — which is that I’m on stage doing a really, hopefully funny, uplifting show about cancer, then I guess I must be…”
Tickets are now available for Rhod Gilbert & The Giant Grapefruit, which is at Cardiff’s Utilita Arena on April 25 & 26, 2025. You can purchase them here.
