Martin Kemp firmly believes he has "10 years" left to live and is grateful for every moment he gets to spend with his nearest and dearest.
The Spandau Ballet bassist spoke to his son Roman Kemp on a recent instalment of his podcast FFS! My Dad Is Martin Kemp titled "Death" when he was asked how much longer he expected to live. Martin ominously warned: "I'll be really honest with you, 10 years."
This then prompted the performer, 62, to reflect on a previous health scare he'd encountered, which had led him to have a different perspective on his life.
"I don't know how long I've got left but I will tell you, since I was the age of 34, when I went through all of that brain tumour scare, I spent two years of my life thinking I was going to die. And I think, after that, everything else, every day, every year, every month that I've lived, every experience that I've had has been a bonus," he explained.
As a result, Martin has come to accept his fate and feel privileged for the life he has lived as he added: "It's really strange that when I was 34 and stuff and I went though that brain tumour stuff, I was practically resigned to the fact that I was going to die, but I was quite happy with my lot, because I had lived the most incredible experiences."
He recalled: "By the time I was 34 and I thought I was going to die, I spent two years thinking about it, I was quite happy, I thought: 'If I go, do you know what? What a life, and that was back then'. So every year that I live, every month that I’m alive now is like a bonus."
Fans will remember that Martin Kemp was diagnosed with two benign brain tumours in the early 1990s and had to undergo radiotherapy and surgery to have them removed. While the operation was successful, he continues to combat epilepsy, a notable side-effect from the procedure, and has to take medication.
Martin also stated that the surgery left him struggling with cognitive functions but the timing couldn't have been worse - EastEnders bosses had approached him with a role. His loved ones were less than thrilled once they heard the news and tried to convince him not to accept the offer, terrified he could be ruining his career.
"Everybody around me was saying, ‘Don’t do it, don’t do it. It’s going to ruin your career, don’t do it’", he remembered on the Dish podcast in 2022. "Well because they hadn’t had any name actors in that show before, right? Everybody had grown up with EastEnders, so I was kind of the first one of those name actors to go in."
But with his cognitive function still impacted by his brain tumour surgery, Martin saw EastEnders as an opportunity to "get (his) life back together" and went against all the advice given to him.
"My brain still wasn’t working properly from the operation. To the point where sometimes if I wanted to walk left, I would walk right, or like I couldn’t think about putting things in order, or anything like that. Learning lines was just way out there", Martin said.
"When EastEnders was offered to me it was a chance for me to get over it, so it wasn’t just me taking EastEnders on because I thought yeah, it was a good gig - it was me trying to get my life back together." And he succeeded - Martin Kemp's character Steve Owen has since been recognised as one of Walford's biggest villains, appearing on the London-based soap from 1998 to 2002.
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