Ronnie Wood given all-clear after second cancer diagnosis

Rolling Stones star Ronnie Wood was diagnosed with cancer for a second time during lockdown.

The 73-year-old said he had a small-cell cancer and has since been given the all-clear.

The father to four-year-old twins told the Sun: “I’ve had cancer two different ways now.

“I had lung cancer in 2017 and I had small-cell more recently that I fought in the last lockdown.”

The guitarist, who also performed with Faces and the Jeff Beck Group, said he handed the outcome to a “higher power”, a concept espoused by Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous.

He told the paper: “All I can do is stay positive in my attitude, be strong and fight it, and the rest is up to my higher power.

“I’m going through a lot of problems now, but throughout my recovery, you have to let it go. And when you hand the outcome over to your higher power, that is a magic thing.”

After his 2017 diagnosis, Wood said he wondered whether it was “time to say goodbye” to his family, wife Sally Humphreys and daughters Gracie Jane and Alice Rose.

The diagnosis was revealed after a doctor taking routine tests asked Wood if he would like to “go deeper” and have his heart, lungs and blood checked.

“Then he came back with the news that I had this supernova burning away on my left lung,” Wood said. “And, to be totally honest, I wasn’t surprised.”

The musician said he told the doctor: “Just get it out of me.”

The rocker underwent a week of tests, saying that if the cancer had spread to his lymph nodes “it would have been all over for me”.

But Wood said he had decided not to have chemotherapy if the news turned out to be bad.

“It’s more I wasn’t going to lose my hair. This hair wasn’t going anywhere,” he said.