I've reviewed so many comedies about cancer recently I've started to feel less like a critic and more like an oncologist. There have been health-related dispatches from Richard Herring, Mark Steel, Matt Forde, Laura Smyth and the late Janey Godley among others. You might start to think being a stand-up is bad for your health.
With the sad exception of Janey Godley, the aforementioned have, spoiler alert, recovered and are back to firing on all creative cylinders. And none more that Rhod Gilbert, whose tour charting his far-too-close encounter with head and neck cancer has now been extended into 2026.
Rhod Gilbert and the Giant Grapefruit — the title comes from the size of his metastatic growth — takes us through every aspect of his traumatic brush with mortality. From being told about the condition while driving to a gig in Barnstaple to being unable to resist googling grim survival stats.
And then, of course, there was his gruelling daily radiotherapy. Well, not quite daily. As he tells a packed, rapt Apollo. He didn't have it at weekends, because, apparently, cancer takes Saturdays and Sundays off.
It's a story laced with lashings of dark humour. The expressive 56-year-old Welshman was treated at the Velindre Cancer Centre in Cardiff where he had been a regular fundraiser. His picture was on the wall of the room where he had chemo. From patron to patient.
At home he distracted himself with admin. Should he cancel the large sofa he ordered? Would his wife know where to put the recycling? He never lost his ability to find the funny side. He also knew that if he came through it he had a killer of a show. It was either death or, as he grins, "kerching".
Fortunately for both Gilbert and comedy fans it was the latter. Previous outings have found him raging about minutiae, from duvet tog ratings to the efficiency of wheelie luggage. Here he truly has something to rage about. In full flow, arms waving, fingers pointing, voice hoarse, there are echoes of early Billy Connolly. He's that good.
But there isn't just rage, there is also heart. He frequently engages with his audience to see who else has travelled down the cancer pathway. Quite a number it transpires, turning the evening into a bonding exercise as well and an empowering and demystifying one. As if it needed pointing out, the real hero is the NHS.
The laughs never lapse, as he squeezes every last drop of humour from his citrus-sized tumour. One side effect was constipation and he gets lots of mileage — maybe a few miles too much — out of going into intimate detail about how he tackled it.
Gilbert's performance closes on an emotional pay-off as we see him receive the all-clear on film. This may not be the last word on the subject though. In recent months one-liner supremo Milton Jones and oversharer Katherine Ryan have been diagnosed with prostate and skin cancer respectively. The bar has been set high.
Rhod Gilbert and the Giant Grapefruit istouring until February 12, 2026.
