He told BBC Scotland: “I turned 50 recently and I got a letter through the post with a bowel screening test.

“I understand the PSA test (a blood test that can help detect prostate cancer) isn’t perfect, you know you can get results – not false positives, but it can be that men can be treated when they maybe didn’t need to be treated.

“But actually, I think that’s not a diagnosis issue, that’s a treatment issue, that’s a decision for the doctors to make.

“I think knowing your situation is really important.”

Earlier this year health experts recommended that only a few thousand men in the UK – who have a genetic variant and a family history of cancer – should be screened for prostate cancer.

The UK’s National Screening Committee said the harms of screening outweighed the benefits in all other groups.

Hoy said 10,000 men a year in the UK find out too late that they have prostate cancer.

He said there should be some kind of formal process to at least make men take responsibility and ownership and to understand their personal risk.

“In the short term, until something more proactive happens you’ve got to take it on your own shoulders,” he said.

“It’s not what you want to think about and it’s always the thing you push down the list of priorities. You forget about it because life’s busy.”