IRON MAIDEN frontman Bruce Dickinson has told the BBC he is on the mend after his treatment for tumors on his tongue. The 56-year-old told
entertainment correspondent Colin Paterson although his head had been “cooked,” he was feeling ready to celebrate and expects to be singing again soon. He was speaking earlier today (Friday, July 3) at the O2 Silver Clef Awards in London, where IRON MAIDEN picked up the award for outstanding contribution to music.
On the topic of what he has gone through in the past six months, Dickinson said: “Well, I’ve just been through what, actually, a load of people go through every day. I mean, ’cause it’s thousands of people in the U.K. and around the world who have treatment for this kind of thing. So, in that respect, the only thing that’s special about it is that I’m a quite well-known person, so… But I’ve been fortunate. I had a really good bounceback. And everybody says, ‘Hey, it’s gone.’ So I’m just getting better now, really — healing up.”
Asked how big the tumor was, Dickinson said: “I had two, actually. One was three and a half centimeters — the size of a golf ball. And the other one was two and a half centimeters, and getting a bit bigger. And that was the only symptom — I had a lump in my neck, and that was the second one. So I went to the doc, and they went, ‘Oh, that’s a bit weird.’ [They] took a scan of it, had a look, had a poke around, and went, ‘You have head and neck cancer.’ So I went, ‘That’s a bit of a blow’ But you get on with it. You crack on and you get on with it. So… that was it.”
