Before my terminal cancer kills me, I'm desperate to know one thing about UK

It's not been a great week. I hope readers will forgive my oversharing but living with terminal isn't easy. If you hear me on , or on our podcast Tales of the Whales with my lovely wife Lady W, you might not realise it. I'm lucky enough that my voice has been largely unaffected. But my body is a different matter.

Cancer is one of the most draining illnesses I've ever had in my life. Your goes, you continually feel sick. Your blood has a tendency to clot. All of which means you're taking umpteen medications to try and keep it under control. You practically rattle. And a lot of these have their own side-effects too.

Here at the Daily Express we are running a Cancer Care campaign to ensure that all cancer patients get access to mental health support both during and after their treatment.

We need your help to get the message through to the Government and the NHS about how vital this is.

Lend your voice to the campaign by signing our petition:

I've been in this state for more than five years and they've tried everything. Eventually you get to the end of the chain, which is pretty much where I am now. A bit worn out by it all and not feeling on top form.

Now you might wonder why I'm banging on about this, though I hope you'll bear with me. I'm writing this in what posh people call the sunroom, a small conservatory at the back of my home in Kent. The sun's shining outside and last week's weather has been largely delightful, which is a small mercy, right? It just reminds me what a wonderful country we live in and how lucky we are to have been born British.

The Anglo-South African mining magnate and politician Cecil Rhodes famously said: "Remember that you are an Englishman, and have consequently won first prize in the lottery of life." And he wasn't wrong.

Which is why I want to keep banging on as long as I can about what's gone wrong with Britain. Believe me, I'd rather be thinking and talking and writing about happier subjects. The news is depressing. Everything seems to be faltering, including our confidence as a nation and place on the world stage. Mass migration's changed the social fabric of large parts of the nation, anti-social behaviour - everything from graffiti to littering - is rampant, and everyone from farmers to business owners to parents who want to give their kids a great start in life, by sending them to a private school, is being screwed.

But I want to check out (hopefully not yet) knowing things will get better again in my absence for my family, my friends and for all of you.

So forgive me for moaning. It's certainly not for fun.

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Talking about cancer, I'm very happy to lend my support to Robert Fisk of the Daily Express who is battling cancer and trying to raise a petition for funding for Holistic Needs Assessments for all NHS cancer patients. Like me, Robert has an incurable diagnosis. Unlike me, he's only 45, but his stoicism and desire to leave the world a better place is inspiring.

Robert, who's running a , believes it's vital that all cancer medical teams ensure patients have access to mental health support both during their treatment and afterwards. And I agree.

The NHS says that when people are diagnosed, they should undergo a holistic needs assessment. This involves answering questions about what a patient is worried about, whether that be losing their hair, not being able to afford to pay for things, losing their job and so on, and this then forms the basis of a personal care plan. It's a great idea, but in practice it's not widely used.

You can sign Robert's petition to Parliament here and help make his voice, and yours, heard via this .

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Well done to Israel's Yuval Raphael who sang beautifully at Saturday's Eurovision final despite the appalling boos and jeers from crowds.

No matter what you think about Israel and the deeply sad situation in Gaza, Yuval deserves nothing but respect for representing her country. And standing up to bullies.

The 24-year-old was at the Nova Music Festival on October 7, 2023, when Hamas launched its barbaric attack.

She hid under dead bodies for hours until being rescued. None of us can ever imagine what she went through.

And I can't imagine how she found the inner strength to stand strong in another frightening situation... She's a survivor through and through.

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Speaking of strong women, how glorious to see Dame Joan Collins take on a new leading role at the age of 91. She's starring as Wallis Simpson for new film The Bitter End. Joan plays the American divorcee in her final years and looks fabulous in the new publicity pics. I do hope we see her in the same feisty form as her Dynasty days.

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Frank Skinner's revealed he's finally tied the knot with his long-term girlfriend Cath Mason. Well done, sir. Apparently it took five proposals for Cath, the mother of their son Buzz, to say yes but the main thing is he got there in the end. God loves a trier, and Skinner is a Catholic after all. Do I have any words of advice? Keep your trap shut (ironic, I know) and savour every day. Getting married to Lady W has been one of the best decisions of my life. And with my limited time left, I try not to forget it.

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Net zero nutters are continuing to talk rubbish! And no surprise with Ed Miliband as their pied piper. The Energy Secretary has declared war on Reform for their pledge to ditch the Government's ridiculous target to hit net zero by 2050.

Miliband had the nerve to say Reform's common-sense view was "wrong" when he doesn't have a clue what he's doing.

In fact, he's the one in the wrong. Whereas Nigel Farage is right. Net zero [open italics] is [close italics] "lunacy" because it destroys UK jobs and raises household bills while we still import energy from China, the biggest polluter on the planet!

Miliband has no business being in government and the people who have signed up to net zero should be hanging their heads in shame.