Paddy Cole “never thought” he would reach 85 after being diagnosed with cancer.
The musician and radio presenter has been battling incurable lung cancer since 2022 and is currently receiving hospice care.
He has been a steady feature in Irish show business for 70 years after joining his first band at only 15 years old.
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Paddy opened up how he is doing, explaining that his health is “up and down” as he takes a positive approach to his cancer battle.
“In recent years I never thought I would get as far as 85. It was something else when I did, it really was,” he told the Sunday World.
Paddy explained that chemotherapy treatment was so gruelling in the beginning “it wouldn’t have mattered to me if I did die”.
However, he is grateful to be alive, sharing: “My health is up and down, I have some good days, some bad days, but I’m keeping the best side out as best I can.
“I keep in touch with the people in the hospice all the time and they keep me on the pain killers and all that sort of stuff, so I’m getting on with it is the only way I can put it.”
He spoke about his late friend Dickie Rock, who passed away in early December 2024.
“The Lord of Mercy on Dickie, I never thought he’d be gone. Poor old Dickie, he was a great friend.”
Paddy and Dickie performed their final stage show together in 2019.
“The last gig Dickie did and the last gig I did we did it together in a theatre concert. That night I said to Dickie, ‘I have enough, I can’t do it anymore.’
“And Dickie said the same. He said, ‘Yeah, I think it’s time for us to forget about it.’
“I was enjoying it, getting to blow the sax, but sure I can’t blow it anymore.”
He recalled how Dickie had a reputation for being tight with money, but he admitted that it was exaggerated.
“We’d go for a round of gold, four of us, and Dickie would pick up the bill for the four steak dinners afterwards.
“He’d say, ‘Don’t ever tell anyone that I’ve paid for that, it would ruin my reputation.’ Ah, he was funny in ways like that.”
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