Ronan Keating has told how he once had a cancer scare – and is “scared” of actually getting the deadly disease as he grows older.
The Boyzone star, who lost his mum Marie to breast cancer in 1998, revealed he “found a lump” that he thought was cancerous.
He said: “I’ve had a scare myself, I found a lump on one of my testicles and I thought it was cancerous, this is the way our brain works.
Love: Ronan and girlfriend Storm
“It ended up being a small thing, it was harmless but I went to the doctor and got it checked immediately.”
He now raises cancer awareness through the Marie Keating Foundation and admitted that since losing his mother to cancer, the more scared of the disease he has become.
He said: “The older I get, the more aware I become of the disease and the more scared I become and the more active I become.”
He added: “It was hard for our mother to go to the doctor and get checked because she came from that generation that wouldn’t, that was scared, so it’s a terrible thing.”
Ronan is currently working with Electric Ireland as part of their Powering Kindness campaign which encourages people to perform random acts of kindess for others.
The 37-year-old took to Exchequer Street in Dublin to hand out free bars of chocolate to passers by in joint aid with The Marie Keating Foundation.
“Losing my mother was a massive shock to all the family and that’s where the charity spawned from,” he told Newstalk.
“It’s grown and grown since then, we now work with Cancer Research UK and it goes on and on. It probably takes up more of my time now than it ever has in my life.”
“It started as breast cancer because that’s how we lost our mam, but as a man myself, for me it’s probably easier to talk about diseases that men can deal with. We can’t just make it one, breast cancer, it just wasn’t right.”
