Life's Too Short: My Autobiography Book

In August 1997 the BBC television sports presenter Helen Rollason was diagnosed with advanced colon and liver cancer; the prognosis was devastating. Yet Rollason went on to survive for two more years, learning to live with her illness, continuing as far as she could in her broadcasting role, and spending precious time with her teenage daughter Nikki. Life's Too Short is Rollason's matter-of-fact, unsentimental account of her cancer and the life that preceded it. A former physical education teacher, she took the usual dogsbody route into sports broadcasting, a long-held aim: "I decided I wanted to work in television at the age of eight and never really deviated from that ambition". The late 1970s and early 80s were difficult times for women in this area of television presenting--Rollason speaks of a male-dominated environment with few opportunities for women to find a niche--but determination and hard work led her to be the first female to front the major Saturday sports programme, Grandstand, in 1990. From then on her career took off in a major way, and Rollason was named Sports Presenter of the Year in 1996.Life's Too Short gives the overriding impression of a practical, fun-loving, committed woman--Rollason was heavily involved with raising the profile of sports people with disabilities--whose massive contribution to her personal and professional life was cut cruelly short by illness. She writes humorously yet poignantly of living with cancer, of refusing to give up, of her peculiar position as a person with a terminal disease who has to live that disease out in the glare of media speculation, and of her worry for those she will leave behind, in particular her daughter, whose GCSE examination results she is so desperate to remain alive for. Helen Rollason died in August 1999--the tributes that fill the end of the book, from colleagues, friends, family, members of the public, and from her personal oncologist, are testament to a remarkable woman with incredible fighting spirit. "Courage is like a muscle", comments Rollason in Life's Too Short; "it is strengthened with use". --Catherine TaylorRead More