Glenn Campbell has done countless pieces to camera in the two decades-plus he has been reporting on politics for BBC Scotland. Political births, deaths, the occasional marriage, he has looked directly into the lens and told viewers what’s what.

Nothing, however, will ever have as much impact as the reports he delivers in a new documentary showing tonight on BBC1. My Brain Tumour and Me is a first-rate dispatch from the front line of the cancer battle, and contains some of the most extraordinary scenes you are likely to see on television this year.

Campbell fell off his bike in June 2023, leaving him with ten broken ribs and a battered face. You probably remember the photographs. Hard to forget them. After six weeks in hospital he was looking forward to getting back to Holyrood and his job as political editor. Then he had a seizure and landed back in hospital. A scan revealed a brain tumour.

As Sarah Howitt’s film points out, brain tumours are the biggest cancer killer of people under 40. Those with the worst, most common kind, oligodendroglioma, can expect to live a year to 18 months.

Campbell could do nothing about the diagnosis, so he resolved to tell his story instead. In one scene we see him and his wife Claire on their way to hospital for his brain operation. It is also their 10th wedding anniversary.

“Brain surgery is a funny way to celebrate but if the doctors can sort this thing out then we have a lot to be thankful for,” he says.

Five hours later and he has just come round from surgery. Tired, tubes running here and there but he’s exhilarated. “I’m still here,” he says.

There will be two more of these updates, one more shocking than the next. Each one is remarkable for what it contains, and for being authored by Campbell. Most journalists would run a mile with a nail in their foot rather than become the story, and Campbell has always struck me as a member of the no self-publicity club. It is precisely because he is so reluctant to become emotional that his words pack such a punch.

We see his highs and lows and the everyday but essential stuff in between, including visiting his mother on Islay. Campbell’s parents ran the village shop. He retains the accent and the outlook of an islander, never happier than when he is under big skies.

We see him start to bag some Munros as he raises money for research into brain tumours. The treatment, surgery and chemo follow-up, has not changed in a generation, much to the dismay of those with the condition.

As the film shows, Campbell’s story takes many a twist before arriving at a settled place, or as settled as it can be in the circumstances. Like many another who have been up close and personal with cancer, he’s had a wee word with himself about the stuff that matters, and the awful lot that doesn’t. One can only wish him well.

My Brain Tumour and Me, Wednesday 20 November, BBC1, 7pm, and on iPlayer