Sir Cliff Richard has revealed he has been treated for prostate cancer.
The 85-year-old singer said the cancer was discovered when he had a check-up for a recent tour, but that it had been caught early and had not spread.
“I was going to Australia and to New Zealand and the promoter said, ‘Well we need your insurance, so you need to be checked up for something’. They found that I had… prostate cancer,” he told ITV’s Good Morning Britain.
“The good fortune was that it was not very old, and the other thing is that it had not metastasized. It hadn’t moved, nothing into bones or anything like that.”
Sir Cliff was speaking to journalist Dermot Murnaghan, who revealed in June that he has stage four prostate cancer.
The singer said: “I don’t know whether it’s going to come back. We can’t tell those sort of things but we need to, absolutely, I’m convinced, get there, get tested, get checked.”
Sir Cliff also said he wants to work with the King to improve cancer screening for men, after the King spoke last week about his own cancer treatment and emphasised the importance of checks to catch cancer at an early stage.
The musician described the lack of a national screening programme as “absolutely ridiculous”.
“We have governments to look after our country and those who live in that country, so I can’t see how you can say, ‘Oh we can do this, we can do that, but we don’t do this for these people’,” he said.
“We all deserve to have the same ability to have a test and then start treatments really early.
“It seems to me – I’ve only been for one year now in touch with cancer, but every time I’ve talked with anybody, this has come up and so I think our government must listen to us.”
Sir Cliff is known for decades of hits including The Young Ones, We Don’t Talk Anymore and Summer Holiday.
Last month, the National Screening Committee – which advises governments across the UK – said a screening programme for prostate cancer for all men in the UK is not justified.
They say only men with specific genetic mutations that lead to more aggressive tumours should be eligible.
A three-month consultation began at the end of November before the committee meets again and gives its final advice to ministers in England, Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland, who will each have to make their own decision on prostate screening.