A West Norwood man struggling to write jokes for a stand-up comedy night to raise money for a cancer charity said he 'wasn't funny' until he got the disease himself – then saved his routine by making gags about his ordeal.

Hywel Roberts, 37, joked his testicular cancer diagnosis was a 'blessing in disguise' as he was able to craft his stand-up material around his own experience of the disease.

Despite an uncomfortable response to his first gag: 'when I was preparing this gig for Cancer Research UK, I actually got cancer. So that was good', the audience ended up laughing along to his set, which described his diagnosis, and subsequent fertility tests.

Mr Roberts, a marketing manager, said his original material for the event, which he was 'pressured' into doing by a friend, was about him 'being useless as an adult'.

But when he had to have surgery to remove what he called a 'grapefruit'-sized tumour, his new material proved so good he's since won an award.

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He said: "In the end, I wrote the whole thing from my sickbed in two weeks before the show.

"I had to go to a fertility clinic and give a sample to check if the surgery had affected my fertility and I used that as material.

"My whole show was about having testicular cancer - I didn't have time to come up with anything else so I had no choice really.

"The fact it was a gig to raise funds for Cancer Research UK gave the diagnosis a sense of irony - or terrible coincidence - and when I got up there and said I'd had cancer there was quite a weird reaction from the audience.

"They were like - is this real, is this a joke?

"I did pretty well in the end, but during the first bit of my set the audience was a bit shocked and didn't know how to react.

"Having cancer made the fundraiser more personal. A week before the show I really went for it with fundraising and I could use my story to get people to donate."

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Mr Roberts, of Knollys Road, West Norwood, had his left testicle removed but was clear of cancer at his first three-month scan.

Two-and-a-half weeks later, he took appeared in front of 300 people for Ultra Comedy, which gives participants eight weeks professional training ending in a debut performance.

The marketing and communications manager at Textile Children's Trust, which supports families in the UK textile industry, said: "I work in the charity sector myself and thought it would be good to raise money for Cancer Research UK.

"A friend persuaded me to do it, but then he pulled out - which I didn't actually find out until I went to the first session and he wasn't there."

Mr Roberts made it to the final training session with Mike Gunn at Bar Rumba, Piccadilly, before the show at Backyard Comedy in Bethnal Green, where he was cheered on by wife Alex Waddington, 36, having raised £750 for Cancer Research UK.

Ultra Comedy asks each participant to sell 10 tickets to their performance and raise a minimum of £50 for Cancer Research UK before embarking on their training.

Anyone wishing to take part in Ultra Comedy can visit www.ultracomedy.co.uk