Hospitality entrepreneur Nick Jones is a grandad. An unremarkable achievement for a man of 61 with four grown-up children, you may think – except that he is more acutely aware of his good fortune than most.
‘Billie is 20 months old now,’ he smiles. ‘She’s beautiful. Fabulous. We go to the zoo together. And the other day it was piggybacks. Exhausting!
‘She’ll sometimes come with me when I go to work and she’ll be running about, bossing everyone around. Everyone thinks their grandchildren are wonderful, of course. But I’m particularly conscious of how lucky I am.’
Three years ago Nick was diagnosed with a large and aggressive tumour on his prostate, which was urgently removed. Today he is fit, cancer-free – and sharply aware that he dodged a bullet.
‘Just as many men start to become grandfathers, prostate cancer can strike. It’s often diagnosed from the age of 50 onwards.
‘It kills 12,000 men a year in the UK when they’re just starting to think the hard slog of life is being replaced with something more enjoyable, like doing less work and spending more time with the grandchildren. But, sadly, many never get to meet them.’
This short conversational exchange tells us much about the man who founded Soho House, an international chain of private members’ clubs. First, that he has slowed down enough to be savouring the fun of grandparenting. Second, that at every opportunity he brings the subject round to prostate cancer.
His own sharp reminder of his mortality was salutary: ‘It made me think about things I really cherish. I’m so much freer. When I get on a plane now it’s for pleasure, not business. We’ve just been to Paxos for a family holiday with all four children, their partners – and Billie, of course.’
Hospitality entrepreneur Nick Jones was diagnosed with a large and aggressive tumour on his prostate three years ago
He and his wife, broadcaster Kirsty Young, have both had reason to reassess their priorities. Kirsty relinquished her role as presenter of the BBC’s Desert Island Discs in 2018 after she was diagnosed with fibromyalgia and rheumatoid arthritis – the chronic pain, fatigue and insomnia associated with the conditions became debilitating.
Nick is an unlikely campaigner: understated, unassuming; on his own admission, quite shy.
Even so, his quest to stop needless deaths from the particularly intimate male cancer that afflicted him has assumed an unstoppable urgency.
He built a business empire on conviviality but since, three years ago, he relinquished his role as CEO of the Soho House group he has been deploying his skills and energy to get everyone talking about the prostate.
‘I’m trying to encourage TV people to write it into the scripts of soaps,’ he says. ‘EastEnders, Emmerdale, Coronation Street; they all have a responsibility to bring prostate cancer into their plots. The BBC, ITV and Channel 4 are all being incredibly supportive. We are discussing storylines. My friends say I’ve bored on too much. They say, “Nick, we get it”. But they’ve all been screened on the basis of me banging on.’
He talks about the altruism of Olympian Sir Chris Hoy who, despite a diagnosis of terminal prostate cancer, is campaigning for awareness of it: ‘I have such respect and admiration for him. My cancer has been removed. His is terminal and he only discovered it when he had a pain in his shoulder.
‘Cancer is very social. It loves visiting other organs and it had spread to Chris’s bones. The bravery he shows in spending time talking about it when every second is so precious is amazing. I’ve written to him. I hope to meet him. More men need to talk about this.’
So Nick continues to proselytise, cajole, pester. He’ll even collar strangers in the street and talk to them on the Tube – although he cycles more these days, hiring an electric Lime bike. ‘That’s what I’m going to do!’ he laughs. ‘I’ll start bothering people on their bikes! Every time I get into conversation with a man of around 50 I ask him, “Have you had your screening done?” If he says, “No, why should I?’ I’ll tell him.”
Nick and his wife, broadcaster Kirsty Young, have both had reason to reassess their priorities after she was diagnosed with fibromyalgia and rheumatoid arthritis
Sir Chris Hoy said this had been the ‘toughest year of my life’ following his own incurable prostate cancer diagnosis
He is supporting the Mail’s campaign to stop needless prostate cancer deaths with the introduction of a national screening programme. He is a formidable ally.
A trustee for Prostate Cancer Research, he is marshalling contacts, using his influence, getting diverse groups of people together, all with a view to lobbying their MPs – which he urges everyone to do – to endorse male testing.
Support is not confined to a single political party: ‘Health Secretary Wes Streeting is amenable and one of the first things Rishi Sunak did when he left No 10 was to become an ambassador for Prostate Cancer Research. He is passionate about screening.
‘What happens now is nothing. A man can go through life and not know he has prostate cancer – not even know what or where his prostate is – unless symptoms occur. And by then it could be too late.’
Yet prostate cancer is the most common form of cancer in men in the UK and the second most deadly after lung cancer.
‘And what many don’t know is that, if you’re 50 you can go to the doctor and request a PSA (prostate-specific antigen) blood test, but doctors often talk it down: “Oh, you don’t need that.” And we’re all wired to believe our doctors. So you have to push for it. Perhaps even pretend to have symptoms, like peeing more.
‘So I’d much rather have a screening programme so every man at 50 – or 45 if you have a family history of the disease, or you’re black, because you’re at double the risk – is invited to be screened for prostate cancer just as every woman in the country gets a letter inviting her to have a mammogram.’ He also wants to allay a few myths that surround the prostate: about impotence, urinary incontinence and digital rectal examinations (DRE). He wants to make sure men don’t ‘die of embarrassment’.
They are not typical teatime topics, but here we are, sitting on boucle sofas at the Soho House club in the Strand, London – one of 45 across the globe – sipping our cuppas and talking about erections and leaky bladders, and why a ‘finger up the backside’ is only one of the doctor’s diagnostic tools and is ‘inaccurate and usually totally unnecessary’ now blood or swab tests are improving in speed and accuracy.
After former Prime Minister Rishi Sunak left Downing Street he took up the position of Ambassador for Prostate Cancer Research
It also strikes me as unlikely that this mecca for London’s media creatives – a club whose allure has also attracted a celebrity clientele ranging from Hugh Grant and Jude Law to Kylie Minogue, Madonna and Nicole Kidman – should now be holding ‘prostate awareness’ evenings. But then again, the reach and scope of Nick’s campaign is universal: women should alert their husbands; children should nag their fathers: ‘It does not matter who you are making aware. It’s really positive. It’s saving lives.’
Kirsty is involved with these club events. She hosted one recently, deploying her journalistic skills to interview an expert panel in front of a packed audience then chairing a Q&A.
And much is already improving. Under the traditional diagnostic regime, a DRE was followed by a PSA blood test.
‘It’s what saved me because my PSA levels were variable, but it’s not the most accurate tool,’ says Nick. ‘After, in an MRI scan, they found a very large tumour. The standard 45-minute scan is already becoming faster and more efficient, with the UK trialling 15-minute scans. AI tools are also showing that we can analyse these images quickly and accurately. There are so many more options if you have a tumour: freezing it, radiation, watchful waiting. The chances of having to have it removed are relatively slim.
‘So many men don’t know what the prostate is or what it does and I was in that category a few years ago. I didn’t know it was a gland the size of a walnut, or that it produces a fluid which helps make up semen, or that its muscles aid ejaculation. I didn’t know it contains two nerves which make you aroused.
‘I just knew it was a ‘downstairs’ issue and men don’t like to talk about that because they have this image of themselves as never having problems down there. They don’t like to think they might have trouble with incontinence or impotence if they have it taken out. I’ve heard men say, ‘I’d rather not be impotent and have cancer.’ That’s quite a weird calculation. I say, “Well if you’re dead you can’t have sex.”‘
After his surgery, his own problems ‘with peeing and erectile dysfunction’ were short-lived, thanks to the surgeons’ finesse. ‘Ten years ago they’d slit you open and rummage inside and take your prostate out. Now, it’s done robotically. More like a game of Space Invaders. And my surgeons were brilliant at protecting nerves and everything that was important.
‘You still have your sex drive if you don’t have a prostate. You just don’t ejaculate any more.’
‘So many men don’t know what the prostate is or what it does and I was in that category a few years ago,’ Nick said
He thinks back to the family history that has made him vigilant about cancer. It was only because both his parents died prematurely from the disease – his mum Anna at 63 from lung cancer; his father Keith from pancreatic cancer when he was 72 – that Nick resolved to get his prostate checked in June 2022. So he went to his doctor. After a DRE came the blood tests that revealed fluctuating PSA levels. PSA, a protein made only by the prostate, can leak into the blood, signifying a problem, but the levels of it are not an exact indication of cancer. One in seven men with normal PSA levels may have prostate cancer. Yet only about one in four who have a prostate biopsy after a high PSA score are found to have the cancer.
But in Nick’s case, an MRI scan disclosed an ‘aggressive’ tumour on his prostate.
‘Of course it was devastating – as it is for any family that has to cope with cancer,’ he told me when we met two years ago. ‘You go numb. Kirsty was brilliant; very strong and supportive. She gave me a big hug and said, “We’ll get through this.” She gave me the strength to handle it.
‘But initially you think, “I might die.” I didn’t broadcast it anywhere at that stage. I didn’t even tell the children.’ He has two daughters with Kirsty, 56: Freya, 25, and Iona, 19, as well as two older children, Natasha, 31 – Billie’s mum – and Oliver, 29, from his first marriage to Tania.
‘I went into work, pretended everything was fine. And yes, it was tricky, but no worse than for anyone else who gets a diagnosis and doesn’t know what the outcome will be. I was lucky. It was an aggressive tumour but they got to it early.’
The next step was a PET scan (3D images) to determine if the cancer had spread. ‘If it spreads it’s a different conversation. It’s chemo. It’s: how long?’
The later the diagnosis, the worse the outcome. Had the cancer metastasised the odds of living for five years are less than one in three. The tense wait for a result – only four or five days, but it seemed to stretch interminably – felt worse even than the initial diagnosis. He kept missing calls from his surgeon. ‘You don’t get their number, so you just wait and of course there were tears.’ Both he and Kirsty succumbed: ‘There were times when we just let go, both of us, and cried.
‘You cry during the dark moments, when you wake in the middle of the night and wait for morning, hoping the negative thoughts have gone away. You feel very vulnerable and worried. I think the wait to know – wondering whether you’d die, if it had spread – was the worst time.
‘I want to prevent needless deaths…we just need to push for universal screening and for every dad, brother, husband, son, work colleague to take advantage of it’
‘Kirsty was with me every step of the way. She was my eyes and ears when I went to appointments. She’s incredibly smart and she really listens. She’s good at asking the right questions and she researches everything so she’s well prepared. She found out all she could about prostate cancer. And she’s a very calming presence.’
In June 2022 urological surgeon Professor Paul Cathcart called to tell him the cancer had not spread: ‘It was a huge relief. But I still had a big tumour on my prostate. I think I said, “What do I do now?” and I was very strongly advised to have it taken out.’
So that September he had surgery to remove his prostate. Then a further PSA test confirmed no vestige of the cancer remained. Only then were the children told.
‘It was relief rather than jubilation. And then I decided – although we’re very private – that I’d talk about it and write to all our members, because if you put your head in the sand nothing will change. There was no deliberation. It’s a natural thing: I don’t want anyone else to suffer.’ So two months after getting the all-clear, he emailed all 210,000 Soho House members, telling them that he’d had prostate cancer and that the treatment had been ‘100 per cent successful’.
He is gratified by the happy stories of people he has helped since: ‘I’ve had no one say, “It’s too late, it’s spread.” They’re all positive: “They’ve picked it up early” or “I’m on a wait and see”.’
He talks about the changes in him: ‘I’m more patient,’ he says. ‘I look at the life I have ahead of me and it makes me think about what’s important: spending time with family and friends. Not overworking. I was a workaholic but weaning myself off it has been easier than I expected. In fact, I’ve discovered the life I lead now is much nicer. I’ve got time for walks in the country, to push a two-year-old around in a stroller, to play tennis, to read.
‘And I still have the energy for campaigning. I want to prevent needless deaths. I wouldn’t be bold enough to say they can be eliminated completely, but they can be reduced dramatically. We just need to push for universal screening and for every dad, brother, husband, son, work colleague to take advantage of it.
‘And the more we normalise this, the more people talk about it in day-to-day conversation, the more lives will be saved.’
For information about prostate cancer or to find out how to contact your MP to support universal screening, go to pcr.org.uk.
