Rhod Gilbert's Growing Pains returns to Comedy Central
Rhod Gilbert is making his first television series since his cancer diagnosis, British Comedy Guide can exclusively reveal.
Production has begun on the delayed fifth series of Rhod Gilbert's Growing Pains on Comedy Central. And the comic told BCG: "After nearly a year on the bench, it's great to be back out there doing what I love - laughing at the stuff we got up to when we were nippers.
"I'm still trying to make myself feel better about my own mortifying teenage years, so it's great to know I'll get to meet another batch of famous people, sharing the most intimate and embarrassing secrets from their youth. It's part chat show, part therapy."
A broadcast date and guests for the latest series, in which Gilbert judges comedians and celebrities on their embarrassing teenage memories, have yet to be confirmed.
Made by Rumpus Media (Late Night Lycett, Channel Hopping With Jon Richardson), 30 episodes of Growing Pains have aired since it began in 2021, with the first series currently being repeated on Comedy Central.
Gilbert has already announced that he plans to return to live gigging in May, ahead of a run of work-in-progress shows at the Edinburgh Fringe in August, with his treatment for stage four head and neck cancer almost certain to feature as material.
"The cancer is on my mind 24/7, but, when I'm well enough to write, I'm jotting down a few things" he told the Guardian in January. "And there is humour in there, definitely."
Gilbert pre-recorded a video message for Channel 4's The National Comedy Awards For Stand Up To Cancer in February, in which he revealed that his recovery goal was a fundraising trek in October to Mount Toubkhal in Morocco's Atlas Mountains, the highest point in North Africa.
Only the latest international hike that the comic has taken on behalf of the Velindre Cancer Centre in Cardiff, he'd been on a trek of Cuba when he first noticed a lump on his neck.
Of the Moroccan fundraiser, he remarked: "I'm a little way off that at the moment, but I am feeling optimistic and weirdly feeling really happy and really positive."