Lauren Laverne, the 48-year-old broadcaster known for her BBC Radio 6 Music show, Desert Island Discs and The One Show, has announced she has been diagnosed with smouldering myeloma – a blood and bone marrow disorder that can develop into blood cancer – less than two years after recovering from an unspecified cancer.
“I've been diagnosed with something called smouldering myeloma (yes that is a weird name and no I'd never heard of it either),” she wrote on Instagram. “It's an asymptomatic blood and bone marrow disorder that in some people can develop into blood cancer.”
“Lauren Laverne reveals smouldering myeloma diagnosis, less than two years after cancer recovery, but says risk is low.”
Laverne, who received the all-clear from her previous cancer in November 2024 after announcing her diagnosis that August, stressed that the risk of progression in her case is “pretty low”. She said the condition has “nothing to do” with her prior illness and does not currently require treatment, though it has left her immune system “a bit compromised”.
Smouldering myeloma is detected by the presence of abnormal plasma cells in the bone marrow and abnormal protein in blood or urine. According to Myeloma UK, it usually develops into active myeloma at some point, but the timeline varies. Laverne will be “carefully monitored with blood tests, MRIs and bone marrow biopsies (which I have recently discovered are even less fun than they sound)”.
“It's been a lot, especially coming less than two years after my last diagnosis,” she wrote. “But I know that seeing others in the public eye cope with comparable situations has helped me, so I thought I'd be upfront about it.”
The broadcaster credited her GP for catching the condition early after she dismissed persistently low iron levels as unimportant. “He insisted we get to the bottom of what was going on,” she said. “My message to others would be: be like him, not me! Advocate for yourself if you need to and ask to see a haematologist if you are in the same situation.”
Laverne said she is taking a “couple weeks holiday” and will be “back to work as normal after that”. The former Kenickie singer, who has hosted 6 Music since 2008 and Desert Island Discs since 2018, added: “I've had some difficult experiences in the last eight years, but I have learned more from them than some people do in a lifetime and that is helping me right now.”
