We had an amazing amount of support from friends and family, that was an enormous bonus and I suppose on the sinister side and what worries you when you go off to hospital you worry like blazes about who’s left at home whether it’s your wife, whether it’s your parents, whether it’s your children or whatever, whoever you’ve left at home is your worry and I was incredibly heartened with the amount of support they got and you did feel that if this doesn’t go the right way at last they’ve got plenty of support.

From friends and?

From friends and family yeah really terrifically good friends really came up, really came up trumps and that was very, very heartening.

You sometimes find there is a strange attitude in that direction and again you find that some people say How are you? you know, wondering how your cancer is, and it’s almost you know You do look well, and it’s almost the sort of big surprise as to Oh you’re still with us, you know (laughs), you look at it and you think oh dear theres a bit of an attitude problem here. So you get mixed reactions from people, brilliant reaction from my fellow jazz enthusiast who gave me so much support and said Well look my treatment was this and I’m 15 years on now, that was brilliant news. And Ive found one or two other people since, because I will talk about it, and you find then other people have been through the same thing. And their support is brilliant.

And how has peoples reaction been to you?

Well they were quite surprised because I was fine, I was doing everything that I’d always done. I remember I play bowls and I was on the bowling green in a match one day and I just happened, it came up and I happened to tell somebody and he couldn’t believe it (laughs). ‘You can’t be, you look normal,’ well of course I look normal.

How do you feel when people react like that to you?

Well faintly amused I suppose, yes.

So it didn’t change any relationships within the family?

No, no, no in no way.

I don’t know if being diagnosed with cancer anywhere in the body is something that people regularly talk about because cancer is a horror word and once you enter into that particular world people seem to clam up. You mention cancer and people don’t react very well to it they just clam up and don’t talk about it. I think prostate cancer is probably even more sensitive because it’s that area which is personal, private and it’s the area that you don’t generally talk about. So having diagnosed with prostate cancer I found it very difficult initially to talk about it.

But it is still one of those subjects that people find is taboo, you don’t speak about it and I would hope that in the future with so much work going into cancers of various forms, so many societies, and so many places are now, you know, are bringing it to the fore, that it will generally be spoken about and then it will be far easier to approach curing it.

Have you got friends who you can talk to, tell about the prostate cancer?

Oh they, like if you go, say sometime for a pint, they only take it, make it dirty.

What do they say?

They turn it into dirty things.

Do they. Why do you think they do that?

That’s men yes.

Men, what do they, do they, I mean can you explain that, it’s important I’m interested in how people react.

‘Well what have you been up to?’

They say ‘What have you been up to?’ oh no. How does that make you feel, they make a joke of it?

Yes.