🔗 Share this article

You wouldn’t believe it, the singer states. There she was preparing for her new album launch in eight years, ecstatically in love with her current love, and at long last the parent to a young child after facing fertility challenges for ten years, on top of the world. Suddenly in spring she was found to have breast cancer.

The musician, actual name Jess Cornish, is known for being brutally honest. The album, Don’t Tease Me With a Good Time, was supposed to be an transparent story, addressing every bit of hardship she’d faced since she last made an album (a gynecological condition, pregnancy loss, broken romances, psychological manipulation, suicide) with characteristic openness. The initial release, the song No Secrets, was dropped in the spring. But by then there was a mighty secret. The cancer. Later follow-up track, Living My Best Life, debuted in May and Cornish was giving interviews about how she was living her best life, while all the while coping with the disease. Four weeks after she went public, and in early July she had a mastectomy.

She gives me her best “What the fuck?” glance. “I put out with a song called the track No Secrets. I’m doing every interview, and they ask, ‘What’s happening?’ and I respond, ‘Uh, nothing really’” she has just had to call off performances because she’s yet to undergo reconstructive surgery.

We meet at a photo studio in the capital. She is dressed in a tan faux-leather coat, denim trousers with elaborate white patches, off-white boots and oversized specs. Picture biker chic meets vintage look. “I feel like I’m in the seventies and I should have a boyfriend with a big tache.” Like the film, I say, referencing the movie. “They used to call me that!” She smiles. She is fast-thinking, unfiltered and blunt. She says she has always fancied doing comedy and is hoping to make her standup debut soon. “I love making people laugh. During performances I frequently joke about the crowd.”

Medical Challenges and Discovery

She was preparing for an performance at the Baftas when she found a lump. “I immediately went to get it examined, had an scan, and they were, like, ‘It seems benign; your tissue is healthy.’ And I insisted, ‘Yet I sense it. My arm hurts and pins and needles in my hands whenever I wake up.’ And they suggested, ‘How about a biopsy?’ The date was March 28, the day after my birthday.” It was a Friday. The specialist told her if it was concerning she’d contact on the Monday. By then Cornish had convinced herself it was fine. The way she explains it, it was inopportune to face illness when she had a busy schedule.

“It was a fortnight prior from debuting the project after a long hiatus and an extended break. And she contacted me and said, ‘Are you free at six?’ And I was, like, ‘A video call, likely minor.’ So I jump on the Zoom expecting it’s all going to be fine, and she goes, ‘Please take a seat.’ That sympathetic voice? And she says, ‘I’m so, so sorry but your test results have indicated high-grade cancer cells.’” What did you say? “I said, ‘Oh, that’s not ideal, is it?. What awful timing.’ My initial thought was, ‘I can’t die because my son needs me.’”

I’ve been labeled difficult for knowing myself

She viewed the procedure frightening and surreal. “I dislike anesthesia. They walk you down. During crises you roll down in a bed, but now I just marched with a hospital gown and my backside out. You feel like you’re in an episode of Black Mirror.” But, Cornish says, she’s been fortunate. No chemotherapy or radiation, just the op. “Cancer is awful, but yet Luckily it was detected early. I underwent removal four months ago and my one side now appears as a odd shape.” Another grin. “I got to keep the nipple, though.”

The follow-up procedure is both medical and cosmetic. Her boobs, she notes, are now “different sizes. The size doesn’t match. How rude! I thought, don’t add insult to injury, I’m already having a hard period. So rude! Amusingly I said I’d not undergo augmentation because I’ve got perfectionism, and I know they’d never be ideal. Illness changed that.”

A History of Health Challenges

She is accustomed to medical issues. She thinks her outlook on her diagnosis has been so positive because she’s used to health crises. They have often coincided with professional successes, acting as a reminder, or punch in the stomach, to make her recall not to take anything for granted. “Truly, I feel life goes, ‘Enjoying yourself? Sit down.’ From a young age, it has often paired with moments of success for me; something severe or obscure has happened to my health.”

She takes me back to her 11-year-old self, already beginning featuring in the West End in Whistle Down the Wind (she was selected at the age of nine years old). That’s when she was diagnosed with the medical problem a syndrome, which can cause a tachycardia as well as lightheadedness and heart flutters. “I was going in and out of rehearsals on an drip, and being readmitted at night.” She fast-forwards several years, and young Jessica has joined the female band the group while enrolled in the Brit School. “I secured a deal, and I had a brain incident. Then when I was about to put out music in the year 2020 I had a collision and my throat was injured and I lost my voice for a twelve months.”

Hey, I say, wait, I am overwhelmed. A stroke so young? She nods|agrees