Paula Radcliffe has shared why she turned down multiple offers to appear on ITV's I'm A Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here!.
The marathon runner was approached by the show's producers several times, but she declined because her daughter was battling cancer at the time. Paula, who attended the Children with Cancer Gala yesterday, opened up in an exclusive interview with The Mirror.
When asked if she had ever been offered the chance to join the show, she explained: “Yes, It just wasn’t the right time for me, and the one time I really considered it was when Isla was sick, so I didn’t want to do that. Then, after that, came the recovery process.”
Paula, 50, added: “And now she’s doing her exams, I just thought it’d be a bit selfish.” Paula's daughter, Isla, was diagnosed with a germ cell tumour in 2020 when she was just 14 years old.
In a previous interview with The Mirror in 2021, Paula recalled the moment she received the devastating news. She said: "I was given the diagnosis that nobody wants to hear when the doctor said Isla had cancer. The doctor had asked Isla to sit in the waiting room before telling me what it was. I burst into tears but had to stop crying and pull myself together before Isla came back into the room a few minutes later. The doctor then explained the diagnosis to Isla."
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WireImage)Small signs that something might be amiss with Isla's health had begun a few months earlier, when she suffered a pain in her bladder and started bleeding between periods. Paula knew something was wrong so made an appointment with a paediatrician, and after scans at the hospital, the results came in. Isla had a malignant germ cell tumour.
They are rare and affect roughly one in 200,000 women. "When we were over the initial shock and the medical team had explained everything, having that sporting background helped," Paula said. "We had a treatment plan – like all the training plans I have followed over the years, and it was something we could stick to and see things improving."
Isla's treatment went well, and a few months after in November 2020 the tumour had shrunk enough to be surgically removed. The biopsy showed 98 per cent of the cancer had been destroyed by the chemo.
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Getty Images)“I’m always proud of my kids, but Isla has been so brave,” said Paula. “She missed so much of school but has caught up. It has been extremely hard as the treatment has caused ‘chemo brain’ and her memory is still not back to normal. She struggles to concentrate, but that should improve. Kids bounce back so quickly. She was back playing mixed hockey in January, which is her main sport.”
Paula shares Isla with her husband, Gary Lough, 54, who is also a runner. The couple met when Gary was Paula's lodger at Loughborough University. They married in 2001 and have two children: Isla, now 17, and Raphael, 14.
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