Yes basically I went for a PSA test primarily due to someone, a friend of mine who every time he met me, when I reached the age of 50, kept saying ‘Have you been and had your PSA test?’ And his logic was that he knew two or three men who had had prostate cancer and his argument was if only they’d had the PSA test earlier it might have been trapped before it became a kind of major problem. And his logic was that would you, we have our teeth checked regularly, we have our car checked regularly, women have check-ups for cancer, you know why are men so afraid and why don’t, don’t they go? So I suppose on one hand there was the logic of his argument, on the other hand I’m very much a person who says well why go looking for a problem if there isn’t one and if it’s not broke why fix it? So basically I filed it away as a good idea’

I met a friend who was quite close to us, in fact we had been on holiday with them and he had already been diagnosed with prostate cancer some years previously. And he was a person who was quite prepared to talk about his problem and he basically asked me if I’d had the necessary prostate test and I mentioned I’d the normal examinations and then he said, ‘Did they tell you what your PSA was?’ and of course that was total strange language to me and I said, Well what is a PSA?’ and he explained it all to me, as a result of which during my next medical visit to the GP I actually asked for a PSA test to be done.

Oh that’s interesting would you mind just summarising that, you decided to have, starting by saying why you decided to have a PSA test at that stage, all the influences, the things that influenced you?

Yes well obviously my friends own illness and suffering of prostate cancer and unfortunately he passed away last year, 10 years after his original diagnosis and treatment for those years. And it was just coincidence at the same time all this was happening there was a lot of publicity on the local radio about the disease and in fact some interviews have been carried out with men who’d been diagnosed with the disease.

Was there any prostate cancer in your family?

Not to my knowledge but again that’s another thing and obviously one is told about the disease, it can affect many men and they can have the disease and go through life without necessarily dying from it because it tends to be a disease associated with older men, although I understand men in their 50s now are being diagnosed with it, probably because of the fact that more PSA tests are being done. So I think the general awareness that’s been published, and theres also been a number of articles in both national and local newspapers on the disease, it’s sort of come to have this much greater publicity given to it which I feel must be good thing for the future.

Is there any particular national newspaper that you both, in which you’ve read articles about it?

I think there was something in the Independent some while back and I think theres also been, because we take the SAGA magazine.

Oh yes.

There have been a couple of, which obviously is an organisation designed for the over 50s anyway [laughs] there have been several articles on it there and I think. I think also the Telegraph, or the Sunday Telegraph have had some articles on it.