Sue Perkins reveals doctor’s homophobic remark during brain tumour diagnosis
By Will Stroude
Sue Perkins has revealed that her former doctor told her it should be “easier” for her to accept being infertile because she’s a lesbian.
The Great British Bake Off presenter revealed earlier this month that for the last eight years she has been living with a benign tumour in her pituitary gland, which prevents her from having children, but in extracts from her new memoir Spectacles published in the Sunday Times, she recounts the shocking way the news was broken to her by her consultant.
The 45-year-old, who is currently in a relationship with fellow TV presenter Anna Richardson, writes that it “felt like a bereavement” when she found out she would not be able to conceive.
She add that she was asked by a brain tumour consultant whether she had a boyfriend or husband, but when she told him she is a lesbian he replied: “Oh, OK. Well, that makes it easier. You’re infertile. You can’t have kids.”
Perkins writes: “Does not a lesbian have a fallopian tube? Am I not human, and [am] I not somebody who could be a lovely, wonderful mother?”
The former Late Lunch host added that it was over a year before she eventually lodged a complaint about the consultant in question, and that she was deeply affected by the news of her infertility.
She continues: “It really did hit me, as it hits a lot of people, I’m sure, when it’s too late, this is not going to happen. I can’t now have it as an out-of-sight, out-of-mind possibility, lurking.”
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