Sir Cliff Richard breaks silence on secret battle with prostate cancer

Sir Cliff Richard has revealed that he has been quietly battling with prostate cancer for the past year.

During a conversation with journalist Dermot Murnaghan on Good Morning Britain, the 85-year-old veteran singer said that doctors identified the cancer while he was undergoing health checks before a tour of Australia and New Zealand.

"The 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," said Richard.

The Summer Holiday hitmaker added that he has now completed treatment and the disease is currently "gone."

Highlighting the importance of regular checks, Richard said, "I don’t know whether it’s going to come back. We can’t tell those sorts of things, but we need to, absolutely, I’m convinced, get there, get tested, get checked."

During the discussion, the Ocean Deep crooner labelled the absence of a national prostate cancer screening programme as "absolutely ridiculous."

"We have governments to look after our country and those who live in that country, so I can’t see how you can say, ‘Oh we can do this, we can do that, but we don’t do this for these people,'" he said.

"We all deserve to have the same ability to have a test and then start treatments really early. It seems to me – I’ve only been for one year now in touch with cancer, but every time I’ve talked with anybody this has come up and so I think our Government must listen to us," added Richard.