Judith Lucy on her cancer diagnosis: ‘I’m a bit over getting so much material out of my life’

One of Australia’s hardest-working comedians is still laughing at the timing of a breast cancer diagnosis just as she set out to launch a book about wellness. Two days out from surgery, she talks burnout, Buddhism and saying goodbye to her boobs Get our weekend culture and lifestyle email Judith Lucy cannot get a cold.

A few hours before I’m due to meet her for a walk around the rose gardens and classic conservatory of the St Kilda Botanical Gardens, a stone’s throw from her home in Melbourne’s south-east, the beloved comedian is on a telehealth call from the front seat of her publicist’s car. Her doctor needs to go over the results from the previous day’s scans to confirm everything is looking good – good enough to perform the double mastectomy they have planned for Friday, three weeks after she was diagnosed with breast cancer . The cancer isn’t appearing anywhere else on the scans,…