Wife of veteran MP Austin Mitchell, Linda McDougall, revealed that she is fighting breast cancer and had had an operation at London's Royal Marsden Hospital before Christmas to remove a tumor.

Sixty nine-year-old Linda who is a TV journalist and producer said, "I was looking forward to an enormous fight with the General Election. Now it's fighting on two fronts, fighting the Tories and fighting breast cancer.'

Seventy five-year-old Mitchell, the MP for Grimsby, wrote about his wife's illness on his blog.

Linda said the chemotherapy would begin shortly and will be for five months, which will be followed by one month of radiotherapy.

Linda said that she did not realize that she had breast cancer until on a family holiday last summer in California. She went to a hospital after suffering from pulmonary embolism, a blockage of one of the arteries in the lung. She also added that it is very difficult to find out that you have breast cancer until you go to a hospital regarding something else and you get the shocking news.