Even in the face of cancer, Linda Nolan is able to crack a joke and see the positive in the most darkest of times. The 65-year-old former Nolans singer is living with incurable secondary breast cancer, which has since spread to her liver, hip and brain.
She's now living in Blackpool with her sister, Denise Nolan, and Denise's new husband Tom, as her condition and medication leaves her susceptible to dangerous falls. “I try to stay positive,” Linda says during an exclusive chat with OK!. “I’ll use jokes and humour as a way to cope, but of course it’s scary. And I have my days where I’m terribly down.”
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OK!/David Cummings)On the day we meet to catch up with Linda, a few days before Christmas, she's actually recovering from another fall, one of many she's already suffered this year. Her legs just "gave way from under me", she explains, “We’ve got five bath mats down on the bathroom floor, but it didn’t matter. I just went.”
An earlier fall, just before Halloween, she laughs, was painful but actually worked a treat when the kids in the street stepped out for their trick-or-treat sweetie haul. “So I managed to knock some of my teeth out a few weeks back,” she says. “It was just before Halloween and I’d had another fall.
"Anyway, these children came to Denise’s door, trick or treating, and I’m there, bald as anything, no teeth – and these poor little girls ran away screaming. I couldn’t stop laughing. I love Halloween and they actually thought I was a witch. A real one!”
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OK!/David Cummings)Linda is all too aware of what her future holds after losing her beloved sister Bernie to the same disease in 2013, when she was just 52. It might be partly this experience, and partly just Linda's natural sense of humour, but her ability to laugh and fill a room with joy is incredibly admirable and inspiring.
She also credits her family - Denise, and her other sisters, Maureen, Anne and Coleen, and brothers Tommy and Brian - for keeping her spirits up, but understands why some people find it hard knowing what to say to her.
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OK!/David Cummings)“I’ve got an amazing family and great friends, some I’ve known since primary school,” she explains. “And I try to get out to walk with them at least twice a week, which is key in keeping me active and staying positive. It gets the endorphins flowing.
"But a lot of people just don’t know what to say to me. I don’t sit and talk about cancer all the time. But people don’t realise that. I’ve had people I know cross the road to avoid me. If you don’t know what to say to me, tell me that. It’s OK to say, ‘I don’t know what to say, but I’m here for you.’”
Shot on location at Ribby Hall Village, visit ribbyhall.co.uk
English (US) ·