Is Boris as brave as his wife?

Marina Wheeler QC is a remarkable woman who has endured a great deal in the past year. Last September she filed for divorce from her husband, Boris Johnson. The couple have four children, the eldest of whom is 26. She and her family did not choose the loss of privacy that their prime ministerial connection entails, yet such exposure is inevitable.

What was not inevitable, however, was Ms Wheeler’s diagnosis with cervical cancer. Unusually, she has chosen to draw attention to her ordeal in order to alert other women to the importance of smear tests.

Writing in the Sunday Times (behind a paywall), she revealed that she had delayed undergoing tests for no better reason than her busy life. “Something else always seemed more important,” she wrote. “If you are basically healthy, active and energetic, it is easy to think you are immortal.”

 It is courageous of Ms Wheeler to admit that she, like countless other women, had got her priorities wrong. Even after she was given the diagnosis, she recalls that her reaction was to go into denial: “I was unimpressed. Clutching a leaflet, I left thinking: ‘That’s absurd. I have no time for this. Quite apart from anything else, I have a book to write.”

 As a daughter of distinguished parents — the BBC journalist Sir Charles Wheeler and his Indian wife Dip Singh, the subject of her book — Marina Wheeler has a lot to live up to. For more than quarter of a century, she had given unstinting support to a husband who was constantly in the public eye, not always for the most edifying of reasons. Yet she has made a successful career as a barrister and been a devoted mother of four. No wonder she succumbed to the delusion that cancer simply could not be happening to her.

 At one point during her treatment, which involved three operations at University College Hospital, she gave in to despair and tried to escape. She was found and brought back to hospital, where her family hugged her. Her sister Shirin was “her saviour”. Ironically, whereas Marina is a Brexiteer, Shirin is an EU spokesperson. In such adversity, political divisions evidently faded into insignificance, as they should.

The moral of the story, for Marina Wheeler, is that smear tests may seem to be a boring distraction from more urgent tasks, but they are life-savers: “I would urge other women to make the time and do the tests.”

The same applies, only even more so, to men. A 2013 study showed that men aged between 16 and 60 were up to 32 per cent less likely to go to the doctor than women. By the age of 75, this gender gap disappears, but by then it may be too late. One reason for the gap among younger people is that women have a greater need for reproductive services. But even discounting this factor, men of working age show a much greater reluctance to consult their GP. They also receive much less screening from the NHS.

It would be good, therefore, if more men in public life came forward, like Ms Wheeler, and talked about their experiences. We need to tackle irrational fears that inhibit diagnosis: iatrophobia (fear of doctors); nosophobia (fear of contracting a disease, such as cancer); and hypochondriasis (anxiety about existing symptoms). The problem isn’t only those who dread surgeries and hospitals. Doctors may also dismiss patients who present frequently as hypochondriacs, yet overlook the real cause of their distress.

The Prime Minister has pledged to reduce waiting times for GP appointments, which now average two weeks. That is certainly important. It would be even better if the NHS offered free health check-ups for everyone. Boris Johnson, like the superwoman from whom he is now separated, could set an example by talking about why busy people don’t take advantage of the free medical services that are on offer. If even the Prime Minister were seen to make time to visit the GP, perhaps other workaholics would follow suit.