With Matthew Wright

The Wright Stuff host Matthew Wright is cultivating a beard in aid of Beating Bowel Cancer. As he explains to Kate Whiting, the charity is very close to his heart

Compared to surviving without his electric razor in the jungle on last year’s I’m A Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here!, you’d think growing a beard under normal conditions would be a doddle for Matthew Wright.

But the erstwhile clean-shaven host of Channel 5’s The Wright Stuff is not convinced. “I’m not sure I like looking like my face needs a good wash,” he admitted to viewers of his popular morning show, just one week in to Decembeard.

And it doesn’t help this his second wife, Amelia, isn’t a big fan.

“She was really disappointed, when I mentioned I was doing Decembeard. I said, ‘I thought you liked men and beards, I thought this is what you’d want’.

She said, ‘I only like you in a beard when you’re gaunt and haggard-looking like you were in the jungle’. Thanks very much, darling.”

Vanity aside, Wright’s gradually developing salt ‘n’ pepper facial hair is raising well-needed awareness and funds for Beating Bowel Cancer. It’s the UK’s second biggest cancer killer and affects both women as well as men, but as Wright knows only too well, it’s often men who are too embarrassed to go and see the doctor about symptoms including blood in their stools or strange bowel movements.

Both his granddad and his dad died of the disease and he’s been on a mission since his father’s death, some 20 years ago, to make sure “nobody dies from bowel cancer ever again”.

“My dad was a hard man, but he didn’t die at peace with himself, he died kicking and screaming all the way down the line until the diamorphine got the better of him,” says Wright, 49, who grew up in London and was a child actor before pursuing a career as a showbiz reporter.

“I can remember seeing him before he went into hospital towards the end... seeing your father weighing about seven or eight stone and him saying, ‘I’m going to beat this’... I found it quite distressing, because it seemed pretty obvious to me that he absolutely wasn’t going to beat this, but that’s not the sort of conversation you can have.

Until about six years ago, Wright was having colonoscopies every couple of years and fully expecting to get bowel cancer too, due to a rare hereditary condition called Lynch Syndrome.

“It’s a couple of dodgy genes, which are found to have a very strong incidence in bowel cancer,” Wright explains. “These dodgy genes are very prevalent in my family and they increase your chances of getting cancer to 80-85%. When I helped raise money for a major research unit in West London, I used to joke, ‘I’m not doing this for the greater good, I’m doing this for myself’.”

Wright was screened for Lynch Syndrome and, in 2008, found out he didn’t have the ‘dodgy genes’.

Since finding out his chances of getting cancer are back down to the average, he admits his lifestyle has not been quite as healthy as when he thought he was a ticking time bomb.

“One of the professors I met along the way told me if I ate green bananas and never ate meat again, I probably wouldn’t get bowel cancer at all, even with Lynch Syndrome. After 11 years of being a vegetarian, I’ve never felt so healthy as when I started eating red meat again – the surge of energy! But I was a rubbish vegetarian, I basically ate cheese and tomato pizzas all day long and spicy bean burgers. God, they were horrible!”

He feels blessed knowing he doesn't have Lynch Syndrome but is still keen to point out to people when he's fundraising that there is a one in three chance they’ll get some form of cancer.

“I say, ‘Take a look at the person on your left and the person on your right, because one of you statistically is going to get cancer’.”