He was on bed rest after major surgery, the first step of his treatment, when he pulled together his documentary team. “[Documentary team] sounds grand!” Gilbert tells me, “it’s just two people, a cameraman called Mei [Williams] and my director/ producer called Gwen [Hughes].”

Gilbert had realised how much he didn’t know about the viral infection HPV – which resulted in his cancer – prior to his own diagnosis. Or that there had been an ‘exponential rise’ in HPV-related cancer cases in men. The HPV vaccine was rolled out in schools in 2008, but since the infection is more widely known to cause cervical cancer, boys often skip the vaccine. In addition to wanting to raise awareness, Gilbert realised that his impending treatment meant he was “looking at months in bed with nothing. No work. No life.”

Although Gilbert is no stranger to fronting personal documentaries – having made two well-received one-hour specials covering social anxiety and male infertility – he initially struggled to get A Pain in the Neck picked up.

“I suppose it’s not the most attractive documentary to pitch to a broadcaster, is it? Saying, ‘we don’t know what the ending is going to be! It could be quite… dark’.”

Even without a promise of their work reaching TV, Hughes and Williams jumped at the chance to film and joined Gilbert at the Velindre Cancer Centre to document his first session of chemo, just days after he pitched them the documentary . Gilbert said to them: “If we don't get a broadcaster, I'll just pay you. I’ll cobble it together on my laptop, and I will put something out that just raises awareness.”

In the end, Channel 4 picked up Rhod Gilbert: A Pain in the Neck as part of their Stand Up to Cancer programming for 2023. The documentary was just the latest in Gilbert’s decade of campaign efforts in aid of the Velindre Cancer Centre which began long before his diagnosis and treatment there. Gilbert has held regular stand-up comedy nights (with acts such as Michael McIntyre and Greg Davies) for the centre.

In fact, it was one of these nights that drew him out of his five-year comedy hiatus. He had no intention of returning to stand up after his 2012 tour Rhod Gilbert and the Flaming Battenburg Tattoo. However, after announcing he would emcee the gig, he received many messages from fans saying they were looking forward to new material. “I thought I better write some stuff. So I wrote about infertility and strokes and Alzheimer's. And it just went really well on the night. I've been back ever since that gig, since 1 September 2017.”

He also organised treks in aid of the Velindre Centre in countries like Nepal and Peru. It was whilst ‘leading’ a 2022 trek in Cuba (Gilbert says ‘leading’ should be in inverted commas because he’s “always at the back”) when he first felt a lump on his neck. “I’d been ill for months, but I didn’t know what it was. The irony is writ large really: I caught cancer on a cancer fundraising walk with a load of oncologists. ‘I went as a patron and came back as a patient’, is the line I use.”

The irony didn’t end there, as Gilbert’s chemotherapy began in a room with a picture of him on the wall, advertising his patronage. This is something Gilbert makes good use of in his recent stand-up routine: “I have an imaginary argument with me as the patient and me on the wall - ‘what the f*ck do you know about cancer?’”

The documentary sees Gilbert through his treatment, losing two stone (being unable to eat due to nausea), and all the emotional lows. When asked if there was ever a point when he regretted filming his treatment, he says “it’s probably the biggest regret of my career that I didn’t film more of it.”

Although Gilbert agrees it does a “really good job of showing the emotional journey of somebody going through cancer,” he feels he could have shown more of the day-to-day routine, the “full time job” of taking essential medicines. He wishes he could have “given a more realistic graphic picture of what it’s like. I do think [the documentary] only scratched the surface.”

The problem was, he says, that “when you're feeling that ill, it's hard to get a phone out and do a piece to camera […] But if my oncologist was here, she’d have her head in her hands. She would be like ‘give yourself a break, for Christ’s sake man’.”

Despite Gilbert’s own views, he says the response he has had from audiences has been “incredible.” He reckons he’s received thousands of emails, many of which he forwards to his oncologist. Many people, even medical professionals, shared that they had no idea HPV could present as cancer in men. He also hears from those who are about to start treatment saying that A Pain in the Neck has given them the strength to keep going.

At one point in the documentary, Gilbert shares a clip from an 8 out of 10 Cat’s Does Countdown appearance, where he jokes about how his ability to solve the countdown conundrum every time is due to having a “very rare disease.” Gilbert is then seen saying: “Apparently that’s me, a lifetime ago, cracking funnies about having an incurable disease. I’m not laughing any more. Not sure if I ever will again to be honest.” When I remind him of this moment, he laughs at the memory - “I think I was in a down moment there."

Although there are many down moments, Gilbert does show some semblance of humour through the course of the documentary. His first chemotherapy session is punctuated with laughs from both Gilbert and his nurse, Jake. When Jake tells Gilbert to use protection, if he’s sexually active, he replies: “I’ve got one tonsil, no teeth and a f*cking feeding bag in my stomach. Last thing I’m doing is going home for a shag.”

His new stand-up show Rhod Gilbert & The Giant Grapefruit, which is touring until November 2025, is based upon finding the humour in his treatment: “there’s a lot of slapstick in all the usual ways that our body fails.

“There have been lots of laughs along the way, and some of them you're aware of in the moment, and some of them you can only look back on once the sky gets a bit bluer.”  He says that in spite of – or perhaps because of – the subject matter, he is the most relaxed and happy he’s ever been on stage.

Having made a name for himself getting heated about the small things and being a “ranting, raving, lunatic” (his words, not mine), Gilbert is keen that, in his more personal material, one thing has to remain consistent. “This show is about cancer, but it has to be absolutely as funny as the bits I did in the past about luggage handlers or toothbrushes or baked potatoes or duvet tog ratings. That's my benchmark.”

On his nomination for the Presenter award at the RTS Programme Awards 2024, he says: “I didn't really see myself as a presenter on this project. I saw myself as a patient who could help other patients, so it's slightly odd to see the nomination for Presenter.” 

“It just validates that decision, on that Friday night, to [document it]. And it could have gone horribly wrong… it could have been a posthumous nomination,” he says, with a grin. “Sorry, dark humour again.”

Rhod Gilbert was nominated for Presenter at the RTS Programme Awards 2024, alongside Chris Packham and Stacey Solomon.