'My fight for life': BBC presenter's daughter

Charlotte Esler underwent chemotherapy after being diagnosed with Hodgkin's lymphoma last November.

The teenager, described as "inspirational" by her father - a regular presenter on BBC2's Newsnight - is now in remission after four months.

Charlotte was filmed talking to her father about the experience as part of a series of BBC reports on cancer.

"I thought, 'Why me?' because in my lifestyle I didn't see what I had done wrong,' she said.

"I never smoked, I never ate really unhealthily -so I didn't really understand."

Charlotte has now been told that there is a 95 per cent chance that she is cured.

"But the chances of getting cancer as a child is something like one in every 500 so compared to that, 5 per cent sounds like a massive figure," she said. "I think there'll always be that fear."

Nine months before she was diagnosed, Charlotte developed breathing problems after a hiking holiday but thought she had asthma and ended up having tests.

"The uncertainty was the worst bit," said Charlotte.

"They said...it was either leukaemia or a lymphoma. I thought they were joking."

She said of the diagnosis of Hodgkin's lymphoma: "I thought it was one of those things where only lucky people survive but it turns out that, with children, there is an amazing prognosis - 70 per cent or something of children are completely cured for ever."

But she still had to undergo gruelling chemotherapy.

She said: "The worst bit was definitely losing my hair.

"They do provide you with the free, nice, NHS wig but I chose not to wear that because it never looks like your normal hair.

"Also, everyone knows you've lost your hair so what are you trying to prove?"

Charlotte carried on going to school despite muscle pains and gastroenteritis, saying: "I thought that I may not get any long-term side-effects from the actual treatment but if I don't go to school, it's quite clear what they are going to be - I'm not going to do as well as I can in the future."

Mr Esler, who also has a son with his wife Patricia, paid tribute to his daughter's stoicism, saying: "I thought you handled it a lot better than I did, to be honest.

"I remember a sign that said Teenage Cancer Unit and when you see that sign and it is for your daughter, you don't think it is going to be good.

"But you were inspirational; you probably don't realise you were. You just got on with it."