ABIGAIL WILD

At the end of Andy Ripley's new book about his experiences of prostate cancer, he announces: "I'm back." He appears to have no symptoms or side-effects from the seven weeks of radiotherapy, he writes. His cancer is still in him but seems to be causing him no harm. In his words, he is, once again, just another testosterone-filled bloke with road rage.

When I meet him, he still looks like that testosterone-filled bloke, wearing top-to-toe leathers and a motorbike helmet tucked under one arm. He is tall, and so healthy and strong-looking that if it weren't for the grey hair round his shoulders and the faint wrinkles round his eyes you could easily believe he stopped playing rugby for England and the British Lions only yesterday. In fact, he's nearly 60.

He is just back from the hospital, so when we take our seats outside an Italian restaurant in Egham, not far from his home in Surrey, I ask him how his appointment went. He calmly reaches into his pocket and produces a small print-out of two columns of numbers, and then points to the numbers on the page as he talks.

"There's this thing called the PSA test - the Prostate Specific Antigen test. Well, you can see there, that's when I'm on radiotherapy . . . and that's where I'm off the drugs, so the number goes up a bit. And here's my latest result." He points to the number 7.3 at the bottom of the sheet. "It's gone right up. Bang. Twenty times more than it was two months ago," he says. "So maybe I'm not back at all. But we'll see after more tests and scans."

The tagline of Ripley's book - The Rugby Icon's Ultimate Victory Over Cancer - is glaring up at us from the table. "It's quite an irony, isn't it? But, you know what? It doesn't matter," he says. "I'm thinking, if you are at the fag end of your life like I am and you've had a pretty great life - a fantastic life - then victory doesn't necessarily mean survival. Maybe victory is dealing with it, handling it well. Telling other people to get sorted earlier. Making a difference. We all want to make a difference, don't we?"

Ripley is aware that men are not always willing to go to the doctor if they have difficulty passing urine or experience other symptoms of prostate problems and hopes that he can encourage more men to do so. Although he never suffered any symptoms related to his cancer (many men don't), in June 2005 he was reluctant to see a doctor about some trouble with his left shoulder. He only went to hospital when he started to also feel pain in the left-hand side of his chest.

During that visit to hospital he was told he had a pulmonary embolism - a blood clot in the lungs. It seemed strange that he would suffer such a thing, given that blood clots rarely occur in very healthy bodies. He has never smoked, drinks moderately and keeps fit (he is the world record-holder for 2000m on the indoor-rowing ergometer for the male heavyweight 50-60 age group).

He had a round of tests but nothing really explained the embolism. The result of his PSA test, however, was a concern. Such tests usually give a reading of around 3.5 nanograms per millilitre in men his age. His was 133ng/ml. Biopsies followed, and on June 24 2005, locally advanced inoperable prostate cancer was diagnosed.

By August that year, Ripley had begun his book because, as he writes, "I'm totally self-absorbed, self-interested and probably selfish." He repeats these claims several times, as well as confessing to being an attention-seeker, desperate to be loved and meet approval. "The book is written by me, for me. It's vanity, you know, getting published. I don't want to beat myself up about it but maybe a bit of it is being a bit self-preoccupied."

It is difficult to believe that this would be the only reason he put pen to paper during the long months of tests and hormone treatments. He is a well-educated (an MPhil from Cambridge, which he acquired in his fifties), articulate and thoughtful man for whom writing would appear to be very therapeutic. He writes beautifully in tribute to his wife, Elisabeth, and their three children, Marcus, 26, Claudia, 24, and Stef, 21.

He also, rather helpfully, fills his diaries with dense paragraphs about prostate cancer, its diagnosis and treatment, in plain English. During his illness, Ripley appears to have armed himself with as much information as possible so that he didn't unnecessarily have to "cross Anxiety Bridge". "I thought, well, if this thing is going to kill me I want to know what it is. I've learned a bit. But the same thing goes - the more you read the less you know."

One of the things he learnt is that prostate cancer is not so much the real killer as prostate cancer-related illness. "If it's contained in the prostate, that's not going to kill you. It's when it grows and spreads all over," he says. "But the biggest surprise for me is that I got it at all. It's not fair! I really don't want to die. Life is great. It sounds like I'm preoccupied with death, but I'm not, I'm preoccupied with life. Sorry, that's such a cliche."

Ripley seems to be a naturally honest person who is impossible to embarrass and one can only presume this has reduced his chances of suffering in silence. He reproduces in his book a circular e-mail he sent to his friends when his cancer was first diagnosed, in which he casually mentions, among other things, that he might become impotent. Perhaps not typical behaviour for a "testosterone-filled" man. "Why deny the truth?" he says, tucking into his pizza. "That's the way it can be. I can understand why some people might be embarrassed and I sympathise with their point of view, but I'm not."

Being an all-round high-achiever, it does seem that Ripley has approached his cancer in the same way he has approached rugby, rowing, his academic endeavours and his work in business. He has 24 caps for England and at one point was among the top 10 of Britain's 400m hurdlers. He has written several fitness guides, been a star of BBC programme Superstars and worked for several banks. He is a fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants and has held numerous non-executive directorships.

Has he perhaps attempted to reverse the potentially emasculating effects of prostate cancer by turning his fight against the disease into something of test of strength? A my-PSA-score-is-higher-than-yours-and-therefore-I-am-a-real-man kind of thing?

"Yes, there is an element of that," he says. "And I, of course, want to be brave. I'd like to believe all those cliches I write about living for the day, being alive now, because who knows what's going to happen in this changing and difficult and wonderful world that we live in? And at the moment I am in no pain. That really tends to be the deciding factor on whether something is miserable. I'm not, so for now I'm enjoying the attention."

Ripley throws some of his pizza for the jackdaw that's flapping around the outdoor tables. Time is pressing on and he must go home to see his family. "Sitting here talking to you about cancer and how it works is easy. I've got to go back and tell them what's happening. I feel as though I'm letting them down. That's a killer feeling."

He is lucky to have such a supportive wife, I tell him. "I am. We've been good together. You take things for granted. I'm someone who wants to be loved. I'm friendly with the world. I want that waiter to like me; I want to be everybody's friend. Elizabeth gets a bit gnarled with that. But when this kicks in bad, she'll be there with me at home."

Saying goodbye to his new friend, the waiter, we head for his motorbike. "Nobody likes a whinger, do they?" he says. I say he can whinge all he likes. He shakes his head. "Nah," he says. "It's not good to moan. You've got to get on with things." I say goodbye and watch him waiting on his bike at the level crossing while two trains pass by. The barriers raise and he revs back up the hill as quickly as is it legally possible.