An Express columnist with incurable bowel cancer has revealed how one NHS department delivered care so swift and efficient that it upended his expectations of a death sentence, and asked why the rest of the health service cannot do the same.
Robert Fisk, writing in the Daily Express on 24 October 2026, described how radiology staff turned what he feared would be a terminal diagnosis into a clean bill of health for his brain, all within days rather than the month of agonising waiting he had braced himself for.
What the Express columnist reported
According to the Express column, Fisk has been fighting incurable bowel cancer for more than three years. At his previous consultation, a doctor told him a scan had shown activity on his brain and that an MRI would be needed to establish whether the cancer had spread there. He was warned the results might take a month to reach him.
Anyone who has sat in that particular chair will recognise the condition cancer patients call scanxiety: the gnawing dread between scan and result. Fisk describes it plainly. Birthday plans lost their shine. He booked an appointment with his GP, considered a psychologist, and found the worry seeping into his dreams, including one in which a headache never went away.
Then the NHS, so often the object of despair, did something remarkable. He got his MRI appointment just nine days after the consultation, not the two or three weeks he expected. He arrived 25 minutes early; a radiologist collected him from reception almost at once. He chose his own music in the scanner rather than enduring 40 minutes of Smooth FM. And the radiology team had the scan report written and sent to his medical team before his follow-up consultation, which fell only two working days later.
The result was the one he had stopped daring to hope for. There was no brain tumour. No need for targeted radiotherapy, no need for brain specialists, no need for the grim conversation he had rehearsed about pain relief instead of treatment.
Why can't the whole NHS work like this?
The lesson Fisk draws is not a sentimental one about the wonders of the health service. It is a sharp question about management. Why, he asks, does the NHS pour money into people in suits who describe themselves as leaders, while the staff beneath them call them incompetent managers?
The contrast with the people in maroon scrubs could not be starker. Radiologists know what their machines can do, how long each scan takes, and how many patients they can safely see. So they book accordingly. When cancellations free up slots, they ring patients and offer them earlier appointments. The result is a department that answers the phone, delivers on time, and treats patients like human beings rather than entries on an overbooked spreadsheet.
Compare that with the rest of the hospital experience. Try getting anyone in the wider NHS to pick up the phone and answer a simple question; most patients give up. Fisk estimates that 96 per cent of his calls to radiology at his so-called world-leading cancer hospital were answered, with information he could actually understand. Elsewhere, patients sit in waiting rooms for hours because clinics are overbooked or the IT has failed again, unable to plan their day, their work, or the school run.
Managers who profit from failure
Here is the uncomfortable truth that will resonate with anyone who has watched this institution lurch from crisis to crisis. The people with clipboards have no interest in fixing the system, because a fixed system does not need consultants next year. Failure, in the modern NHS, is a growth industry.
The remedy is not another reorganisation from Whitehall, and it is certainly not another tranche of public money poured into the administrative layer. It is to let the clinicians run the show, and to ask the radiologists, in words of fewer than five syllables, to explain how they manage their departments so effectively and how that model can be replicated across every hospital in the kingdom.
This is the old British virtue of pragmatic competence: the quiet professional who does the job well and gets on with it. It survives in the maroon scrubs even as it is smothered elsewhere by process, targets and meetings about meetings. As medical guidance on cancer care makes clear, early support and honest communication with patients are recognised internationally as central to treatment; the radiology department delivered both without being told to.
The columnist's ordeal also underlines the case the Express itself has been making through its Cancer Care campaign: patients need mental health support during and after treatment, not just drugs and scans. Others who have walked this road, such as patients writing about their cancer journeys, say much the same about the difference a responsive care team makes. And for those weighing where to seek treatment, international rankings of cancer hospitals now judge institutions by accreditation, success rates and multidisciplinary teams, precisely the qualities that shone through in this episode.
The wider lesson for Britain
There is a lesson here that goes well beyond one hospital. Institutions built on duty and professional pride, staffed by people who answer the phone and keep their appointments, are not a nostalgic fantasy. They exist inside the NHS today. The question is whether this Government has the wit to notice them, and the nerve to hand power from the suits to the scrubs.
Fisk went into that consultation expecting to be told this Christmas would be his last. Instead he walked out with a clear scan and a blueprint for reform. If the NHS wants to survive, it should read his column twice.
FAQ
What did the Express columnist reveal about his cancer treatment?
Robert Fisk reported on 24 October 2026 that an MRI scan showed he has no brain tumour, and that the radiology department delivered his scan and results within days rather than the month he had been warned to expect.
What does he say is wrong with the NHS?
He argues the NHS spends too much on managers and consultants who fail to solve problems, while radiologists and other frontline staff demonstrate that departments can be run swiftly and effectively when clinicians are in charge.
What is scanxiety?
It is the anxiety cancer patients experience while waiting for scan results, which the Express's Cancer Care campaign cites as a reason for offering mental health support during and after treatment.