The 85-year-old singer said his cancer had \u201cgone at the moment\u201d and backed calls for a national screening test for men.<\/p>\n
In an interview with Good Morning Britain, he said: \u201cI don\u2019t know whether it\u2019s going to come back. We can\u2019t tell those sort of things but we need to, absolutely, I\u2019m convinced, get there, get tested, get checked.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said he was diagnosed after a health check for his insurance ahead of a concert tour of Australia and New Zealand.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe good fortune was that it was not very old, and the other thing is that it has not metastasised. Nothing had moved into bones or anything like that.\u201d<\/p>\n
The singer, known for decades of hits including The Young Ones, We Don\u2019t Talk Anymore and Summer Holiday, described the lack of a national screening programme as \u201cabsolutely ridiculous\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have governments to look after our country and those who live in that country, so I can\u2019t see how you can say, \u2018Oh we can do this, we can do that, but we don\u2019t do this for these people\u2019,\u201d Mr Richard said. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe all deserve to have the same ability to have a test and then start treatments really early.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt seems to me \u2013 I\u2019ve only been for one year now in touch with cancer, but every time I\u2019ve talked with anybody this has come up and so I think our government must listen to us.\u201d<\/p>\n
The King last week said his cancer treatment would be reduced in the new year, and Mr Richard said he was keen to join forces to raise awareness.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve been involved with many charities over the years and if the King is happy to front it for us, I\u2019m sure loads of people, I certainly would join him\u2026<\/p>\n
\u201cIf the King is listening, I think most of us would say \u2018yeah \u2013 we\u2019re available\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n
In November, the UK National Screening Committee announced a draft recommendation for a targeted prostate cancer screening programme.<\/p>\n
If implemented, the programme would invite men aged 45 to 61 with a genetic mutation of the BRCA1 or BRCA2 genes for screening every two years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The 85-year-old singer said his cancer had \u201cgone at the moment\u201d and backed calls for a national screening…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":192660,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[93,61,60,898],"class_list":{"0":"post-192659","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-ie","10":"tag-ireland","11":"tag-latest-news-ticker"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192659","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=192659"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192659\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/192660"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=192659"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=192659"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=192659"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}