Mr 2%

The clinical oncologist is talking to me and I have a list of questions, but it's all a complete blur. Nothing he’s telling me is really sinking in.

I catch the fact that I have stage 4 cancer. My body is full of it and its terminal. There is no cure.

Mine is a non PSA secreting prostate cancer which is very rare – just 2% - which is why it wasn’t picked up earlier.

It’s prostate carcinoma and the scans show it has spread via the lymph nodes to my hips, spine and chest.

The only other characteristic I can find about people in the UK that match that percentage are people with green eyes. But I have brown eyes.

This has absolutely nothing to do with my cancer. But hey maybe I could call myself Mr 2%.

I am going to be given a new hormone therapy drug called Darolutamide coupled with chemotherapy for five months will give me a lease of life of up to six years.

Chemo will start in two weeks and I’ve been told not to lift anything heavier than an iron. That’s good because I enjoy ironing.

No twisting of the hips, so no dancing to Sophie Ellis-Bextor’s “Crying At The Discotheque”. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JdXecuVl7_4

The list goes on. No carrying of suitcases, no reaching for anything. I need a butler fast.

Perhaps I should call up my old mate King Charles III to ask if I can borrow one of his.

But will he remember me from the Princes’ Youth Business Trust days when we visited Birmingham on his 40th birthday and his minders went all funny when he went on his walkabout and calmly talked to rough sleepers as though that was the most normal thing to do.

[Cue here to Rishi Sunak’s public relations advisers. It’s perfectly possible to be rich and act like you really understand what it’s like to have nothing].

I’ve now got to eat healthily, cut my alcohol content down to eight to ten units a week and do long walks, but perhaps not in the vein of The Hardest Geezer who walked the length of Africa.

I haven’t yet drawn up a list of my favourite Kinks songs for my wake, but maybe I could call up Raymond (Ray) Douglas Davies who I interviewed back in 1968 after the release of “The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society” and ask him if he could pen a song for me.

After all Ray has written 698 songs and I’m sure one more wouldn’t be too much to ask because I’m not sure “Acute Schizophrenia Paranoia Blues” quite hits the target. But that’s how I feel at the moment.

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