Slade's Noddy Holder remains cancer-free, his wife says

Slade legend Noddy Holder remains all clear from cancer after his latest scans, his wife Suzan says.

The frontman contracted oesophageal cancer in 2018 and given six months to live - but new chemotherapy treatments helped him fight back.

Results the couple received on Tuesday show "everything's all still clear and doing good", she told BBC WM.

After Suzan revealed her husband's diagnosis councillor Pete Smith put forward a motion at an authority meeting calling for the town to send thoughts to the 77-year-old and his family.

Suzan said Holder was "Walsall born and bred" and the Black Country forever remained close to him, with them visiting the area often.

"There's a Lego statue of the man. He's been a cake on Bake Off - I'm not sure what other honours there are out there for him to achieve," she said.

"He wears it lightly," she joked.

"He's very humble about it - of course he isn't. He says, 'Yes, I'm a living legend'."

While the singer has recovered well from the experimental treatment, she said they had been through some "dark days".

They had decided to go public after Holder said he wanted to help the Christie Hospital in Manchester where he was treated.

"It's a gastric cancer and a lot of people have misrepresented it as throat cancer and those type of gastric cancers don't get a lot of attention and they need to do more fundraising into these amazing treatments they've obviously got now and can work so well," she said.

The couple, who have been together for more than 30 years, realised they had shocked a few people by revealing his news, but Suzan said they wanted to also give people with the same or similar conditions hope.

"As somebody with somebody who is going through that, I know in my darkest, darkest days I would scour for stories about people who had beaten the odds or had had a great outcome, or if it had gone well I needed to know there were those possibilities out there, to just get you through the dark days sometimes," she said.

"But you just need so much strength when you're going through [this]..... if you can cling on to anyone to get you through those hours, those days those weeks, it does help."

However, she said telling family and close friends about his diagnosis "made it more real".

She had previously "blanked out" the conversations she had to have with their three children and two grandchildren because it was traumatic.

But they now feel they can talk about it, despite Holder being a very private person, "through the rear view mirror".

In the summer, the singer performed a homecoming gig in Walsall, which she said he really enjoyed and more concerts were planned now he was "back on his feet".

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