George Alagiah, 63, who is living with stage four bowel cancer, was first diagnosed in 2014. After receiving the all clear the following year, he later confirmed the cancer had returned in 2018. In a new podcast in partnership with Bowel Cancer UK, he opened up on living with a stoma after his treatment, having had an ileostomy, where the small bowel is diverted through an opening in the stomach and a bag is worn to collect waste products. "I used to find [it] difficult - I had a stoma but I didn't look disabled,” he said, speaking about his “guilt” at using disabled bathrooms.
I used to feel guilty and feel like I needed to apologise and explain
George Alagiah
“I would be turning the key in a disabled loo in a motorway service station or something. And if there was a queue and somebody obviously disabled [was there], I used to feel guilty and feel like I needed to apologise and explain.
"The reason you need to go into a disabled loo is that you just need a little bit of space, to get the contents of your blue bag out and the sanitising equipment and so on,” George explained.
The BBC favourite also said he had to have his suits adjusted altered because of the stoma bag.
“As a man, and wearing a suit for work, I had to get my suits taken out and wear braces, and so on, because it was higher up,” he said.
"I [was] always looking around at my colleagues and thinking, ‘Can they smell anything, can they hear anything?’”
“Before I was presenting the news, I used to be a foreign correspondent,
