A COUPLE of years ago this month, I picked up the phone and dialled Wilko Johnson's number.
The guitarist had earlier been diagnosed with terminal cancer of the pancreas. He had been told that he had 10 months left, and had decided not to seek chemotherapy.
Our interview was to publicise his forthcoming concert in Glasgow; inevitably, however, given that Wilko knew that he was coming to the end of his life (Glasgow and other dates were billed as a mini 'farewell tour'), I couldn't help but ask him about his health, though it felt intrusive to do so.
He took the questions in his stride. He was an engaging interviewee, philosophical about his fate. He had received the diagnosis just before Christmas 2012, and in this interview, as in others, he said something that has stayed with me. "When I walked out of the hospital into the sunshine, suddenly I felt this elation. I just felt so alive."
He spoke animatedly about his previous visits to Glasgow, when he was still part of Dr Feelgood.
The concert itself, at the O2 ABC, on March 9, was life-affirming, free of mawkish sentiment. There was a full Saturday-night house. One fan had driven up from the Midlands with his son just to be there, so see Wilko one last time.
Up on stage, Wilko and his band - Dylan Howe and Norman Watt-Roy - were in brilliant form. The man himself looked in robust health. They encored with Bye Bye Johnny, then Wilko mentioned that his wife, Irene, who had died from cancer in 2004, had been half-Glaswegian. There was one final song before they called it a night. The fans waved bye-bye, Johnny (John is Wilko's real name), knowing they would never see him again. More than a few had tears in their eyes.
But Wilko kept working through 2013. In 2015, he is still with us, having undergone radical surgery at Addenbrooke's Hospital in Cambridge. "They took this tumour out of me - this tumour weighed three kilos. That's the size of a baby. They cured me," he told a magazine awards ceremony late last year, when he was presented with an Icon award.
Like the indomitable rocker he is, Wilko is on the road again. The title of the new tour is, naturally, 'Still Kickin''. There's a Glasgow show at the O2 ABC, on March 20. It should be pretty special.
As Wilko told that same awards ceremony: "If there's a moral to this story, it's that you never know what's going to happen." Amen to that.
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