UK rock star urges men to check their health after his prostate cancer hell

British rocker Billy Duffy of The Cult has told us how a prostate cancer diagnosis shattered his world – but inspired him to urge other men to discuss their health.

And the guitar legend, 63, told the Daily Express positivity is helping another UK rock star endure lifesaving NHS cancer treatment – his pal Mike Peters of 80’s punk band The Alarm.

Earlier this month Billy – who formed 90s band Coloursound with Mike during a Cult hiatus – travelled from Los Angeles to Manchester’s The Christie hospital to see how the new NHS CAR-T treatment was affecting him.

Now back in LA preparing for a new Cult tour of Brasil, Billy opened up to us about his own shock cancer diagnosis – and how he wants more men to discuss their health and be plucked “off the ledge” of despair.

And he praised his partner – ex-Miss Great Britain and ‘Real Housewives of Cheshire’ star Leilani Dowding, 45 – for being his nurse and rock and pulling him through his cancer crisis.

Billy, who first found global fame with 1985 hit ‘She Sells Sanctuary’, explained how a 2017 health check found his PSA (prostate-specific antigen) levels were up – often an indicator of prostate cancer.

He said: “This doctor said ‘has anybody in your family had prostate cancer?’ I went, well funnily enough, my half-brother has just had successful treatment in Manchester for it. He’d had a lot of symptoms but I didn’t.

“So we did an MRI and there were shadows on it and so I had a biopsy which wasn’t pleasant! Then I got a phone call a week later which began ‘Hi Billy, a bit of bad news…”

He said the shock news almost pushed him off a mental cliff but luckily a radiologist friend helped him get some perspective.

He told us: “He said ‘meet me for coffee and I will talk you off the ledge’.

“Like everybody you have your little panic moment. We actually cancelled The Cult gigs which in retrospect was completely unnecessary.

“I met him at a coffee shop and he explained to me what I had in very plain English and he was super. I’ve had the same opportunity personally to talk guys off the ledge and tell them what they’ve got and explain all the choices.”

Billy was given a choice by US medics to do ‘watchful waiting’ for a year – but he decided to have keyhole robotic prostatectomy in October 2017.

The ‘da Vinci’ surgical system allows surgeons to remove Billy’s prostate with enhanced vision and precision, so he did not need to have additional radiotherapy.

He admitted: “It was definitely scary but I just got on with it, probably like Mike has with his cancer.”

The operation means the father of a 23 year-old daughter is unable to naturally have any more children but as Billy explained: “It’s about margins and how it can affect your sex life.

“I wasn’t planning on having any more kids so that wasn’t an issue. But it’s important for guys to know more about your choices. I had the opportunity to share that when one of my oldest friends got worse prostate cancer than me.

“He’s in Manchester and I said to him ‘ask your doctor about the da Vinci machine’, anyway it turns out they do it, he did get it and it was successful.

“It’s important men talk about their health because often they don’t. I’ve had a lot of conversations with guys about it.”

Speaking of his long-term engagement with ex-model and Real Housewives of Cheshire star Leilani Dowding he explained: “We’re as good as married. We’ve been engaged for ages. Really good together and we have a great life.

“Me and her got together five months before I had the prostate cancer operation – she nursed me through all of that.

“We were together before the surgery and afterwards and that’s a testament to the fact prostate cancer is not a death sentence.”

Billy joked he was going to do the ‘big reveal’ on social media about his prostate cancer in 2019 after it was all cleared but just as he was set to go public Sir Rod Stewart dropped the bombshell that he had it.

Speaking in September 2019 at an event for the Prostate Project, Sir Rod revealed: “I’m in the clear, now, simply because I caught it early.”

Laughing, Billy told us: “Rod Stewart beat me to it. He said it all and who was going to listen to me after Sir Rod!”

Earlier this month Billy travelled from Los Angeles to The Christie to meet punk rocker and former bandmate Mike Peters, as the 65 year-old underwent gruelling CAR-T immunotherapy.

Mike, who also fronted chart-topping band Big Country, found global success with The Alarm hits including ‘Sixty Eight Guns’ – but since 1995 has fought an aggressive lymphoma cancer multiple times.

Now after his cancer returned again last autumn, Chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy is his main hope to finally beat it once and for all.

His T-cells were extracted, sent to Netherlands to be bio-engineered to seek out his rare Richter’s Syndrome cancer and kill it. On Thursday he finally returned home exhausted after four weeks treatment but two stone lighter.

CAR-T temporarily left Mike vulnerable against infections as his immune system was rebooted while his superpowered new T-cells battled the disease.

Earlier in an emotional interview in Manchester’s The Christie Mike told us about life and death and his dream of creating a legacy to help other sufferers.

Mike explained: “When I reach the point of no return I will know. The doctors are brilliant in communicating that.

“No-one has said it’s the end of the line or there would be no other options. The CAR-T puts me on the threshold of a new life.”

Mike – as co-founder of the Love Hope Strength Foundation with wife Jules, 57 – also spoke out to urge more Britons to sign up to the Stem Cell Register, be a match and save a stranger’s life.

Now Billy has told us how he felt the need to visit Mike during his hospital stay to support his pal in his hour of need.

Billy told us: “We’re like family so going to see him at hospital much seemed the right thing to do. I had a really nice long chat for hours with him at the Christie.

“I think the music is actually what he uses to fight the disease – cancer’s a psychological battle as well. That’s his fuel.

“He’s like a little raging fire, and he keeps throwing logs of music on there to keep going up against the odds. But he’s so positive as well.

“I don’t think I’ve ever met a more positive person in my life. He oozes it, which is very admirable, he chooses to take a positive outlook.”

Billy added: “When I moved to London to try and make it in show business, I ended up working in a hospital for a couple of years as a porter, and they always been an interesting environment for me.”

Recalling how they first met at a festival, fan Billy said he was playing with diehard fan Mike in a five-a-side tournament there.

He explained: “I’d been in the cult since like 1983, and then the band kind of split up, went on hiatus in 1995, and I had the rug kind of pulled out from under me.

“So I ended up going back to the UK, and got dragged along to play those celebrity five-a-side tournaments in the summer of ’95.

“I met Mike and we just hit it off like a house on fire, to the point where we almost felt like we were related, we just pretty much saw everything the same way. He felt like a long-lost brother to me.

“I was like, there’s this guy and we have the same history with punk rock, and our band’s had a successful thing in the 80s, and we were just sort of in touch.

“I went hiking with Mike, because he lived in North Wales, my family are up in Manchester, and I had a place in Cheshire, and that’s how it started.

“Eventually after enough hikes the guitars came out and the Coloursound thing just very much happened organically. We recorded the album ourselves, it was great – I had a really life-affirming time.

“If as we hope he gets the ‘all clear’ we might do some new Coloursound stuff just the two of us, we were chatting about that at the hospital. Just me and him, semi acoustic in small venues!”