King Charles encourages cancer patients to ‘keep buggering on’

King Charles has shared some advice with fellow cancer patients, telling them: “What’s that Winston Churchill saying? Keep buggering on.”

King Charles at Hillsborough Castle in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Picture: Getty Images

King Charles has shared some advice with fellow cancer patients, telling them: “What’s that Winston Churchill saying? Keep buggering on.”

His comments came on the second day of his visit to Northern Ireland as the King visited a cancer research laboratory in the pharmacy and pharmacology department at Ulster University’s Coleraine campus.

Charles, 76, who is still receiving cancer treatment after being diagnosed with the disease more than a year ago, asked patients whether they were managing to “survive the side effects all right?”

“You just have to push on, don’t you,” he said, sympathetically.

During the visit, the King was shown a new technique for a highly “targeted drug delivery system”, in which medicine is loaded into microbubbles to send to the precise site of cancer within the body.

The technique, which is about to begin clinical trials on humans, is designed to minimise the side effects of chemotherapy, using only 10-20 per cent of the dose currently required. The King, who is still receiving an undisclosed form of cancer treatment, said the research was “amazing”.

In the research centre, the King was introduced to scientists, researchers and PhD students working on stimulus-responsive therapeutic systems for cancer. Hearing about the reduction in side effects, he clenched his fists for emphasis and said: “Yeah!”

A senior palace aide said afterwards: “It was of course particularly poignant for the King to learn a little about the work going on at the university to develop pioneering cancer treatments.

“While we wouldn’t comment in relation to his own treatment program, I know His Majesty is deeply grateful to all the researchers and medical staff around the UK who are working tirelessly to support all those affected by cancer. The breakthroughs that have been made in the past few years have been quite astonishing.

“The King was determined that this visit should be an occasion to meet and thank a few of those working in the field, in the hope it would help shine a light on their work, not his own illness, and in the process give all those affected by the disease a good booster shot of optimism.”

THE TIMES