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Evening Standard
Evening Standard
Entertainment
Tina Campbell

Sarah Beeny reveals why she didn’t want her breast cancer battle included in memoir

Sarah Beeny has revealed she didn't want to include details of her breast cancer battle in her memoir, despite talking about it openly in the past.

The TV presenter, 51, announced that she had been diagnosed with breast cancer last year but was given the all clear in April this year.

In June, she released her documentary titled Sarah Beeny vs Cancer.

However, she said she was keen to omit her experience with cancer when putting pen to paper for The Simple Life: How I Found Home, which was released in August.

Appearing on the Mid.Point podcast with Gabby Logan, the mum-of-four explained: “It's a funny journey and in some ways, it feels like I didn't want it to be the defining thing in my life. I didn't want to be: ‘Sarah Beeny had cancer’.

“I actually asked the publishers if I could not put it in and they said, ‘No, that’s not really going to work not putting it in.’ I was like, ‘Really? Are you sure we have to put in?’

“My friends laugh about it, but they say that my coping mechanism is to pick up the carpet and sweep everything underneath and then pop it back down and then move on.

“I’m not saying it’s how anyone else should be, it isn’t; I’m sure many people would say that’s terrible, and you should process it.”

She added: “We all own our own edit, I always think that's kind of the interesting thing in a way about life.

“I've been lucky enough to live on the planet [for] 51 years and I couldn't tell you anything about my life without taking 51 years to tell you about it, so I have to edit it down. Then you choose what you want to edit in and edit out, and I kind of like to edit in the good bits.

“I didn’t really think cancer was a good bit, so I thought I would prefer to edit out, so when I wrote the book, I intentionally kept it to one chapter which I thought – that way, you could just not read that chapter if you didn’t want to.”

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