The Telegraph has been campaigning for targeted prostate screening, which would offer tests to men with a family history of disease, black men and those with high-risk genes.
This approach has been backed by a national survey of urologists, the specialists who treat prostate cancer.
But earlier this month, James Murray, the Health Secretary, accepted recommendations from advisers to restrict routine screening to a few thousand men and expanded a screening trial to include black men aged 45 to 74.
Prostate cancer is the most common cancer in men in the UK, with about 63,000 diagnoses and 12,000 deaths annually.
Speaking from a hospital bed at the end of the Clarkson’s Farm season finale, the presenter revealed he had experienced complications during treatment, which he told The Times had been caused by him resuming a course of tablets he had been taking for his earlier vascular and cardiac problems.
He said: “That was horrific and it was all my own fault. I’d been on drugs for heart issues and I had to come off them during the cancer treatment.
“Two or three weeks after the cancer operation, I thought I’d better put myself back on those blood thinners. Big mistake, huge.”