Iron Maiden's vocalist, Bruce Dickinson, has spoken out about his experience with cancer - and given some graphic detail into the source of his specific virus.
Dickinson was given the all-clear from cancer at the back of this tongue earlier this year with reports that he was "singing better than ever".
Now, speaking in an Sirius-XM radio interview, Dickinson has given details about originally finding the tumours: "I had one golf ball-sized one in my tongue, and I had another one the size of a large strawberry or a small walnut in the lymph node in the right side of my neck, and that’s the one that felt a little strange."
He continued: "Everybody makes the jokes about Michael Douglas [who made similar claims] because he was having oral sex and it’s just, like, OK, we need to get over that one, guys, because this is kind of serious. There’s hundreds of thousands of people at risk for this."
The metal singer finished the interview with some sage wisdom: "Guys should know, if you get a lump here, and you’re over 40, don’t just assume antibiotics will get rid of it. Go and properly get it checked out. It’s important."
Listen to Bruce Dickinson speak of his experience below (segment begins at 23:10)
In a more recent interview speaking to Jim Norton from Opie Radio, the singer said: "The thing about the HPV virus is people don't know a great deal about it. I don't mean to be flippant or anything, but you would expect lesbians to have a higher incidence of it. But no, there's is 25% less than in men. It seems to be something that affects men."
Always one to follow-up with a moral, Dickinson said of his experience with cancer: "I've learnt to have less time for people who waste my time. If I want to waste my time, I'll waste my own time. They also had me on morphine for the last couple of weeks for pain. It was very disappointing."
He concluded: "there are hundreds of thousands of people dealing with this every day. It's astonishing there aren't more people jumping off bridges, you know?"
