Martin Kemp has said he believes he has just ’10 years left to live’ after brain tumor diagnoses in the 1990s.
The music icon was already famous when he was told the news he had two benign brain tumors. The celebrity underwent major surgery and radiation treatment to remove them.
But the facing mortality forced the Spandau Ballet star to contemplate death.
The 62-year-old had the candid conversation with his son Roman on their new podcast.
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Thankfully, Martin Kemp is still here 30 years later despite the terrifying ordeal of the two brain tumors.
In the new podcast, FFS! My Dad is Martin Kemp, the bass player revealed he believes he has just 10 years left to live, and said he spent years thinking he was going to die after the brain tumor diagnoses. The first was the size of a ‘squashed grapefruit’, and half his skull was removed by surgeons to remove it. The second tumor was more problematic, and the star opted for radiation over another operation.
Doctors told him the second tumor was a ‘ticking time bomb’ and had increased to a size where they had to act quickly. But if he underwent surgery they’d have to cut through his brain to remove it – and Martin didn’t want that.
But it was his wife that managed to find an alternative.
He explained: “Because of the way they had to cut it out, I was told I would lose some of my movements here and there. Shirlie refused to accept it.
“She hunted around the world and came across an American doctor called Professor Black who had a new machine that could treat the tumour with radiation and was non-invasive.
“There were only two of these machines in the world, and fortunately one of them
was half an hour from my house, at St Bartholomew’s Hospital in London.
“I had one treatment of radiation, and six months later the tumour started to die. It had worked.”
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‘I’ve got a decade left’
When son roman asks about when he thinks he’ll die, he says: “I’ll be really honest with you, 10 years.
“I don’t know how long I’ve got left but I will tell you, since I was the age of 34, when I went through all of that brain tumour scare, I spent two years of my life thinking I was going to die.
“And I think, after that, everything else, every day, every year, every month that I’ve lived, every experience that I’ve had has been a bonus.”
He added: “I was practically resigned to the fact that I was going to die, but I was quite happy with my lot, because I had lived the most incredible experiences.’
“By the time I was 34 and I thought I was going to die, I spent two years thinking about it, I was quite happy, I thought: ‘If I go, do you know what? What a life’ and that was back then. So, every year that I live, every month that I’m alive now is like a bonus.”
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‘Don’t make my funeral sad’
The star began discussing funeral plants, explaining he wanted it to be an intimate affair with only up to 30 people attending. Kemp added he’d like a montage of his life played for the funeral-goers too.
But he had one vital rule for his son.
He said: “Do not make it sad. That’s the last thing I would ever want. None of those standard hymns that people sing over and cry. None of that.
“I want people to walk out thinking ‘what a life'”.
The musician added he wants his coffin carried into the creamatorium to the song Born to Run by icon Bruce Springsteen. Not only that, he doesn’t want any Spandau Ballet songs played either.
The singer carved out a new career for himself in the late 1990s when he took up acting in Soap Operas. He joined hit UK TV show EastEnders as Steve Owen, who owns a nightclub.
But he says behind the scenes he struggled remembering lines and controlling his movements, and his brain surgery had an effect on his health, leaving him with controlled epilepsy.
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