Slade’s Noddy Holder shares cancer update after being given six months to live

 Slade‘s Noddy Holder has shared a health update after he was given just six months to live at the start of his cancer battle five years ago.

In October this year, Holder’s wife Suzan revealed that the musician, 77, was diagnosed with oesophageal cancer in 2018 and was told he had only months to live.

“Five years ago we were given the devastating news that he [Noddy] had oesophageal cancer and only had six months to live,” she wrote in Great British Life magazine.

She described the diagnosis as a “total bombshell”, but added that her husband was coping with “good humour and breath-taking bravery”.

The article also confirmed that Holder had undergone “a gruelling course of experimental treatment as part of a brand-new trial of intense chemotherapy”.

However, the ‘Merry Xmas Everybody’ artist has now revealed that the experimental treatment has proved effective in prolonging his life beyond doctors’ expectations.

“I lost all my hair,” he told BBC Radio 2 of the treatment (per Metro). “My weight was down to about eight stone.” However, the treatment has been working and Holder said that “everything’s on an even keel”.

“So I hope it carries on that way,” he added, joking that he was “fit, fit, fit, but I’m fit for nothing”.

Suzan previously said her husband had “responded well” to the new treatments. She added: “As anyone who has received a cancer diagnosis will know, the experts never like to use the word ‘cure’, but here we are five years later and he’s feeling good and looking great.”

Just this month, Holder revealed the real inspiration behind Slade’s festive 1973 hit ‘Merry Xmas Everybody’, 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.