FEARGAL Sharkey has revealed he was diagnosed with prostate cancer after a casual visit to his local GP for a sore throat.
The water campaigner, 66, has spoken out about his 2023 ordeal to raise awareness and urge men to undergo cancer screenings.
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After his testicular cancer scare, the Undertones singer is now doing “very well” and pledged to “carry on this fight” for clean waterways after his health issue was cleared up a year ago.
A keen angler, Feargal told the Express: “About a year and a half ago, I randomly went to see my GP with a sore throat.
“Now I’ve known him long enough but he goes, ‘No no, you’re that bloke that used to sing.
“So if you’re telling me you’ve got a sore throat, something is going on’.
“So my doctor, being the beautiful, wonderful, awkward, cantankerous old man that is gone, ‘Oh Feargal, by the way, you’re 65 now, I’m going to run the full battery of tests’.”
That wondrously awkward old physician’s insistence on checking out the singer resulted in him being diagnosed with prostate cancer.
But “without that random visit” to his local GP, Feargal would have never known that he had cancer, and warned “it could have been a very different ending and a very different outcome to my life.”
He urged all men over 45 to go and get checked out for prostate cancer saying “If you’re lucky”, you’ll walk away.”
The campaigner has slammed water companies, blaming their “greed, profiteering, financial engineering and regulatory incompetence.”
He has denounced companies such as United Utilities, which deals with wastewater across the Northwest of England.
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Storm overflows at two water treatment plants dumped raw untreated sewage at Cunsey Beck and Haskshead Pumpking Station, both flowing into England’s largest Lake Windemere.
The company claimed the spill was due to record rainfall last August but mourning evidence indicates spills are happening regularly.
Campaigners claim the spills are a lack of infrastructure investment.
Feargal said: “Sewage dumping has nothing whatsoever to do with heavy rain.
In an interview on BBC Radio 4 Today was asked if banning bonuses for water bosses and criminal liability for spills would go far enough in the new water bill.
In response, he said: ‘Whitehall has no monopoly in any of this by any means. Welsh Water, for example, is actually the largest sewage dumper in the United Kingdom. Scotland has any number of rivers in bad ecological condition.
‘Lough Neagh in Northern Ireland has been poisoned to the extent that it too now turns green, like Windermere.’
