Radiotherapy: death talk on Primetime National Radio - The Steve Hewlett interviews.

Between October 2016 and February 2017, BBC Radio 4 broadcast a series of interviews with presenter Eddie Mair and journalist Steve Hewlett, following Hewlett's diagnosis with oesophageal cancer. These interviews, which became compelling listening – and for a brief moment, part of public conversation – provide the focus for this article. Three broad but overlapping themes are identified from analysis of the interviews: 1) the subjective lived experience of illness, and specifically, oesophageal cancer; 2) the experience of navigating UK cancer care, and debates about the organisation and delivery of UK healthcare; and 3) the function of talk in mediating the experience of living with/dying from cancer. Two further strands are woven into the discussion: the specificity of male cancer talk; and radio as a medium for facilitating first-person narratives of illness/dying. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]