Martin Kemp has opened up about his brain tumour diagnosis and predicted that he has only “10 years” left to live.
In the 1990’s, the Spandeau Ballet bassist was diagnosed with two brain tumours and had to undergo radiotherapy and surgery to have them removed.
Although the benign tumours were removed successfully and have not reoccured, the 62-year-old continued to battle with epilepsy as a side effect.
Speaking on the first episode of his and his son Roman’s podcast FFS! My Dad Is Martin Kemp, he got candid about the situation.
When asked how much longer he thinks he will live, Martin replied: “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.”
@romankemp So this week we released our brand new podcast! Safe to say how my dad wants to be buried has created some conversation… #ffsmydadismartinkemp ♬ original sound – Roman Kemp
“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.”
“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.”
“Every year that I live, every month that I’m alive now is like a bonus.”
He told Roman that he “would be happy if I got to 80, that gives me 18 years!”
Martin also revealed that in the midst of his healing, Eastenders approachd him with the role of Steve Owen.
On an episode of the Dish podcast in 2022, he said: “Everybody around me was saying: ‘Don’t do it, don’t do it. It’s going to ruin your career, don’t do it.'”
“Well, because they hadn’t had any name actors in that show before, right? Everybody had grown up with EastEnders, so I was kind of the first one of those name actors to go in.”
“My brain still wasn’t working properly from the operation. To the point where sometimes if I wanted to walk left, I would walk right, or like I couldn’t think about putting things in order, or anything like that.”
“Learning lines was just way out there. When EastEnders was offered to me it was a chance for me to get over it, so it wasn’t just me taking EastEnders on because I thought yeah, it was a good gig – it was me trying to get my life back together.”
