Matt Forde: The year of my cancer diagnosis was the greatest year of my life

Matt Forde is a self-confessed political nerd. Everything about politics and politicians fascinates him. And while his own politics remain deeply rooted in the Labour Party of Tony Blair, which he joined aged 15 and the left the day Jeremy Corbyn was elected leader, he can find common ground with any other political animal who just wants to chew the fat and argue the toss.

He is a political obsessive. He did work experience with one MP when he was still at school, was employed by another while at university studying politics, and went on to work for party HQ during the latter days of the last Labour government under both Blair and Gordon Brown. He attended Blair’s leaving bash. Comedy was always just a bit of a side hustle to his real passion as a Labour apparatchik until he realised he could make people laugh about politics and earn a living, and that then became his full-time role. 

As a close observer of politicians and what makes them tick, he pours all that learning into an insightful and side-splittingly funny political commentary, while his extremely flexible features mould remarkably well into his uncanny impersonations of everyone from Blair to Starmer, to Boris to Trump. He even manages a passable Liz Truss, but Nicola Sturgeon still evades him.

His interviews with politicians during the Edinburgh Fringe have become legendary. And his podcast, Political Party, which he originally launched because he was simply “fascinated by how people develop their own political ideas” has had over ten million downloads with guests that include Blair, Brown, Sturgeon, Rachel Reeves, Angela Rayner and Jacob Rees-Mogg. He has also written for and voiced Spitting Image characters and been a regular on shows such as Have I Got News For You. 

And so, it was only natural when the general election was called that while candidates from all parties embarked on a short campaign to prove to the public that they were worth electing, Forde embarked on his own personal mission to interview at least one candidate from all of the country’s 650 constituencies (he managed 150 in the end) to explore what drives them. He discovered many things. That candidates largely survive on a diet of chocolate and frozen pizza.

That they put in the miles pounding the pavements and knocking on doors while their cars are full of leaflets and food crumbs. That female candidates suffer horrendous social media abuse and that the politics of division over issues like Gaza have spilled over into real threats of violence. That every seat has its own distinct political identity and that concerns about sewage pollution were a unifying issue. Basically, that different things drive different people at different times and are rooted in different places. Would-be politicians are not, as Forde discovered, a homogenous group but they are all incredibly excited about the prospect of standing no matter who for.

“I guess what drove me to do this – and it was a bit bonkers, and at one point I had done 15 interviews in one day and my brain was fried, I felt punch-drunk, like sitting in front of a TV for too long – was that the view I find most upsetting is when people say all politicians are the same,” he says. “That upsets me because if they’re all the same, then what’s the point?”

Matt Forde photographed for Holyrood by Louise Haywood-Schiefer

Spending time with Forde is like drinking an energy drink. He fizzes with enthusiasm, is self-deprecating, extremely honest and is also one of the happiest people I have ever met.

Yet as we sit down, we both recognise that it’s almost a year ago to the day that the newly married, newly turned 40, Forde was given a medical diagnosis that would change his life forever. He had just finished his regular mammoth run of shows at the Edinburgh Fringe and was preparing to be the host at the annual Holyrood magazine Garden Party and Political Awards when he was told that the back pain which he has assumed was sciatica was actually cancer growing on his spine. He didn’t tell me at the time because he says he didn’t want to “bring a downer” on the event.

“I’d had this terrible nerve pain,” he tells me. “I had had an MRI scan, and then I found out just after the festival ended and I was waiting for surgery, when I came to do your event, that it was cancer. I guess I just thought I don’t want to not do it. I have really enjoyed doing it every year, it’s just one of the nicest events that I do, it always gives me hope that politics doesn’t need to be this toxic place because every year when I do the Garden Party I look around and you’re in a room, effectively a friendly room, a lot of people that you know, politicians at Holyrood and from Westminster, from all parties, and they are all having a good time. Laughing at themselves and putting tribal politics to one side. It’s good for the soul, if you like. 

“And I find it’s such a positive event, and then there I was knowing that I had this thing growing inside me and I’m not sure that I ever thought in terms of, ‘is this the last one I’ll ever do’, but at that stage, I did know life was likely going to be different. I didn’t know exactly what cancer it was or what lay ahead, and I don’t think I thought in explicit terms, of will I be alive this time next year, but I was sort of aware that this was something that I always did for you, that I really loved and enjoyed, and perhaps didn’t know if I was going to do it again. It kind of felt like I was carrying a secret but for that moment, I just wanted to get through it feeling normal and taking in that positivity from the event but yeah, inside, I was sort of like, ‘aw man, this is tricky’.”

A few weeks later and in typical Forde fashion, he put out a tweet making light of the fact that he was recovering from an operation to rid him of cancer and was learning to walk again. 
Over the course of the last year, he has gone through major surgery to remove the cancer on his spine and because of how much bone was removed, he has also had to learn to walk again – he is still using sticks – and deal with what he jokes about being “a lot of replumbing”. 

“I’ll be off sticks eventually and that’d be nice, once my legs have fully recovered. Part of the issue of why I need the sticks is because I was in hospital for such a long time and my muscles wasted away but also it’s because I had the base of my spine removed and to cover the gap where that huge bone was they created a muscle flap out of my existing muscle by pulling the muscles up from my buttocks, the back of my thighs. So, my anatomy has been rearranged and there was a lot of nerve damage as a result of surgery, so just having to learn to walk again is hard but also with muscles that are in the wrong place. I think that’ll take time. But I’ve made my peace with it – it will take as long as it takes.

“The harder thing initially was that I have a stoma and have to wear a colostomy bag. I always found that disgusting. You know, when I saw pictures of people with one, I’d go, ‘ugh, why did you show me that?’ I don’t want to think about poo, I don’t think about my own, certainly not about anyone else’s.

“Now, obviously, my perspective has shifted. So, in a way, that’s why I feel almost a responsibility to educate the me of just a year ago. But it is quite a hard thing to come to terms with because you think that’s for end-of-life stuff. That’s when your body has really broken down and you’re incapable, that is when you get that sort of thing and that makes you feel very vulnerable. I remember just thinking, I don’t want to have a shit life, don’t make my life shit, please.

“A lot of the people who have stomas have had it because they’ve had ulcerative colitis and for a lot of them, although it’s still distressing, it vastly improves their life because they’ve been in a lot of pain. Obviously, for me, it’s a sign that I don’t have cancer anymore, so I’m grateful. But for me getting that tumour out was the first thing and then the priority was the wound at the back. In a way, for my first few weeks in hospital the stoma just wasn’t even on my mind. I was as high as a kite. I couldn’t change it myself. That was just taken care of. Then as I begin to repair more, that became more of a deal. And I found that very hard to deal with so I feel like I should talk about it, if it helps to demystify it for others.

“The night before my surgery, I got to meet my stoma nurse who was phenomenal, really helped me through it all but they give you this guide, and there’s pictures of basically old people. And you’re like, ‘ok, well, this is reinforcing my view’ – or maybe that was just confirmation bias. And in it, there was a warning page telling you to not attempt sexual intercourse with the stoma. Like the actual hole… I mean, who the fuck has tried this? Like it would not even occur to me. Oh my God, they’ve obviously had to issue that warning because people have tried it. I just was like, ‘uh, don’t worry about that’, we’re not going there. I also have to self-catheterise to pee.

“That may end up being permanent. I think there’s a very small chance that it might not be, just because they can never tell with nerves what comes back. But the main nerves to the bladder and bowel sat on that bone and they had to snip them to get the bone out. I don’t think I would ever recover enough nerves to function properly. So, six or seven times a day, I have to stick a catheter down there. But it’s very easy. I mean, the thought of sticking anything down there for a man, that is a one-way street, isn’t pleasant, but actually it’s just fine. it’s not even unpleasant. It’s just routine now and doesn’t hurt. At the end of the day, I’m just very grateful to be here.

“In the moment where – and I remember it so clearly – they were telling me that it might be a secondary tumor and it might have metastasised, I thought, I don’t know whether he’s going to say I’ve got five or 10, maybe one year left, but I had a moment where every single part of me was thinking in unison, it was almost like even the smallest cells in my skin, and saying, ‘cut any part of me off to stay alive’. It was such a moment of clarity. I was prepared to have any part of me sawn off to stay alive. 

“And it wasn’t even taken with a heavy heart or in the pit of my stomach, it was just a moment of total peace and clarity. It was an amazing thing. Just the desire to live was so overwhelming. But it wasn’t like adrenaline-inducing. It was just a moment of total and utter clarity. It was an amazing feeling to be at one with your body. It felt almost spiritual.”

Having presumed Forde was probably an atheist, I ask him if in fact he has a faith.

“I used to,” he tells me and as ever, surprises with a story that raises more questions than it answers.

“My mum was a nun before she had me and my sister, so I was raised in a God-fearing house. I think that’s where maybe a lot of my politics comes from. Certainly, values come from that place. And we went to church, which I guess is almost like a political thing, because you’re thinking about your community and where you fit…”

Hang on a minute, your mum was a nun?

“Yeah, she was a Catholic nun, but she left the convent and went onto become a nurse and met my dad, but he wasn’t around when we were growing up, so she basically raised us on her own. We grew up on an inner city Nottingham council estate and on benefits which I think probably played a part in politicising me quite early on – realising things were very hard. 

Forde interviews Nicola Sturgeon at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2019 | Alamy

“Anyway, we went to a local Church of England church. I was actually an altar boy and stuff, so quite serious. And even though I incrementally lost my faith, as I was sort of getting into politics, I’ve always retained respect for it. I don’t like it when people slag it off and are disrespectful of it. Even institutions that I don’t like, like churches that are in many ways fundamentally conservative and very regressive, people who go to them and worship in them think about how to make the world a better place, and I have a lot of respect for that. 

“This whole near-death thing has slightly, maybe, just nudged me back a bit towards a faith but I think I’m still an atheist. But if people told me they were praying for me, it made me feel better. In fact, there was a period where I was in a lot of pain for a sustained period of time that was very, very difficult, and in that period, if people just told me they were wishing me well, it had the same effect. Just the thought that someone else is bearing you in mind, sending you some love, it would literally just for a second, just knock the edge off the pain, that was like a genuine pain relief element. So, when people say prayer doesn’t work – well, when people told me they were praying for me, something worked. But in a way, isn’t that a form of secular prayer?

“It’s been interesting to reflect on it all because I think, if you’re going to talk about faith and its shortcomings or the beliefs of any one church or sect or faith, surely you have to apply the same critique to them all? 

“And I totally understand why Kate Forbes would feel that she got a raw deal because we didn’t do it to Humza Yousaf. Absolutely, people don’t dare do that to Muslims, but we’ll do it to Christians. We’ll all have a free hit on Christians, because we mainly grew up around them, and it feels like it’s long established. It’s an easy hit. 

“It was the double standard, I think, that people found difficult, and also the way that it was used. I disagree with Kate fundamentally on her views on gay marriage and other things but using them as a piñata when people wouldn’t dare do that to politicians with similar beliefs that come from other religions, I just thought was a complete double standard. And also, I just think, in public life, there’s always like a group that it’s all right to dunk on and that’s not right.”
Forde has described the last year as “the greatest year of my life”. I ask him what he means by that.

“I feel like I got something extra out of life for having gone through this, rather than having lost anything. I just think the whole experience reaffirmed all the things that I already thought. That I always thought most people are really sound, that most people are good, and that’s been my experience of it. That you have the potential in life to do things that you really enjoy, and you should take them. And that when I started having conversations with my surgeon when I didn’t know what sort of cancer it was, and therefore what the outcome would be, and that when you’re sort of bargaining with how much time you might have left, I certainly remember thinking, well, if that’s the case, I had a good go at it.  

“I followed all my passions. I got a lot out of life. I got a career that I loved, and it took me to wonderful places, opened a lot of doors that I’d never even known existed. That felt life-affirming. The main sadness was that I had just got married. That was the only real sadness, and I was thinking that I would really miss my wife. Obviously, I was sort of aware that being dead, I wouldn’t be capable of missing her. Hopefully, she might have missed me. 

“But joking aside, I was sad that potentially our time had come to an end, too soon, that was what really upset me. Because while I felt like I’d got a lot out of the life I had lived, not being with her and living the life we could have together, that was the thing that was very hard…

“But hey, she’s not getting rid of me that easily.”

Forde is cancer free and was back in Edinburgh for his usual Fringe run interviewing politicians, while also using the platform he has to raise awareness about stomas and to hopefully bring some humour to what can be a taboo subject.

On politics, I wonder if he is not tempted to rejoin the Labour party now that Keir Starmer is the leader.

“No, no. I don’t think I’ll ever rejoin. Because I’m an addict. And if I’m going in, I’m not just going to be some passive member, I’d want to get stuck in again, and I don’t have the energy to keep having the same conversations within the Labour Party about what the sensible direction to take it in is.

“I never thought Jeremy Corbyn should have even been a Labour member at the point at which he was able to stand to be leader. And I think one of the downsides, in the Blair years of having such a big majority, was that people like Corbyn were tolerated. Effectively for the sake of party management. But you store up those problems later, because he was always beyond the pale of the Labour Party, he was always outside of the mainstream. And in the Ed Miliband years, I was getting very disillusioned that, oh, my God, why are we deliberately trying to lose a general election – that’s what it felt like.

“And then changing those leadership rules, I just thought was insane. Because having worked for the Labour Party, the rulebook is almost constructed to prevent entryism, so much of it is shaped by the Militant experience, which Ed Miliband will remember far better than me. Ed Miliband would have been old enough at the time to appreciate how dangerous it is to let other people from outside come in and take the party over.

“And then he makes this change to the rules that are just sort of batshit. It just made me wonder whether he actually understood how the Labour Party works at all. So that and its inevitable consequence that Corbyn won, I just thought, ugh, enough. The day Corbyn became leader, the moment it was announced he had won, I cancelled my membership immediately and I won’t go back because it would just be inviting disappointment, and I don’t need that in my life.

“In a way, what I have now, is the ideal thing because I still get to indulge my obsession. I love following politics and consuming it and watching it, and I still have people that I would rather win than lose. Obviously, it’s not like I’m now free of politics. I’m still on the centre left and always will be. I still watch a lot of parliament and read a lot about it and interview a lot of politicians and I get to make fun of them. And most of them can take it…”