Sue Perkins has revealed she has a brain tumour which prevents her from having children. The Great British Bake Off co-host, 45, discovered she had the benign growth, which is located on her pituitary gland, eight years ago as she underwent tests for another BBC show, Supersizers."I'm lucky that it's benign so it's not in itself a worrying thing," Sue told Good Housekeeping magazine. "Sometimes it's big and makes me mad, and sometimes it's small and is in the background.
Sue Perkins has been living with a brain tumour for the past eight years
"Sometimes it screws up my hormones. I have various tests now to make sure the side effects aren't too onerous. "She revealed: "I found out when I had a check-up while filming The Supersizers, eight years ago. I was at a point where I was spending so much of my life doing TV that I only found out about my real life through a television procedure."I didn't have time to go to the doctor in real life. That's what really made me think that the balance (in my life) was wrong."The star, who is in a relationship with fellow TV presenter Anna Richardson, also talked about how the tumour has prevented her having children because of its impact on the secretion of reproductive hormones.
"We live in a time and a place where we think everything is possible," she said. "I don't know if I would have gone on to have children. But as soon as someone says you can't have something, you want it more than anything."Sue's diagnosis was all the more poignant given that her presenting partner and close friend Mel Giedroyc has two children with her husband Ben Morris. "When she had her first child I thought, 'This is an experience I won't have or share. You've gone somewhere I can't go'," Sue confessed. "You think it's going to destroy something, but actually it hasn't destroyed anything – we have very different lives and different experiences now."