Slade‘s Noddy Holder has revealed he was among the first UK patients to receive “a new regime of chemotherapy” which saved his life.
The band’s frontman was given six months to live after being diagnosed with oesophageal cancer in 2018. Still, he has since recovered after receiving a pioneering type of treatment at a hospital in Manchester.
Speaking to BBC Breakfast, Holder revealed she was among the first patients in the UK to receive a new type of chemotherapy for his specific type of adenocarcinoma cancer.
“Luckily for me, I’m still here five years later,” he said on the show. An NHS statement added: “There are different types of oesophageal cancer and Noddy had a type of adenocarcinoma cancer that we thought might respond well to this chemotherapy.”
Speaking on Sky News about the diagnosis and treatment, Holder said: “I was more worried for my family, how they were going to react, than I was for myself really. I went eventually to The Christie hospital in Manchester and I said, ‘Well is it six months? Is that it? Is that the end of the line?’
“And they said, ‘Well, the only option you’ve got is an experimental treatment that we’ve never ever tried before, we’ve had some success over the past 12 months with it, but we’ve never tried it on anyone over 60’… because it was very, very hard going.
“He said, ‘But your positive outlook and your mind could help you, and are you willing to take the trial on?’ and I said, ‘Well, what choice have I got really?…’ and I tried it, it was hard going, very hard going, but five years later I’m still standing.”
Holder also revealed that he wakes his wife up every Christmas morning by bellowing the iconic lyric “It’s Christmas” from Slade’s festive 1973 hit ‘Merry Xmas Everybody’.
Speaking on BBC Breakfast, his wife Susan Holder explains that the Slade musician makes a cup of tea first before belting out the lyric. “I do wake the whole house and the neighbours,” he added.
Last year, Holder revealed the real inspiration behind the track, which was partly inspired by the success of John Lennon and Yoko Ono‘s ‘Merry Christmas (War Is Over)’.
Holder said it was the “hardest song we ever had to record” after bandmate Don Powell narrowly escaped death in a car crash in Wolverhampton earlier that year and had to re-learn how to play the drums.
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