NEIGHBOURS icon Ian Smith has delivered a heartbreaking update about his health after being diagnosed with a ‘rare and severe’ form of cancer.
The 86-year-old actor, best known for playing Harold Bishop for nearly 40 years on the Australian soap, appeared on Good Morning Britain on Friday to discuss his health and wellbeing.
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Smith chose to leave the soap earlier this year after he was diagnosed with pulmonary pleomorphic carcinoma – a rare and terminal form of lung cancer that gave him just months to live.
He had previously been told he was expected to die by March this year, but thankfully he’s been able to extend his life thanks to immunotherapy which has helped him defy the odds.
Speaking on GMB, Smith said: “It’s a cruel, ugly, brutal place, and I don’t know how, but it looks like I’m having the best luck in the world with defeating this cancer.
“Although the oncologist can’t tell me that, they said because this cancer is so rare, so drastic, so severe, so awful, they don’t know, they don’t know what it’s going to do.”
“After my last treatment I asked, ‘How long do I have to keep going with these treatments?’,” he added, explaining he was told he can stop at any time.
“[The doctor] said ‘No. We know so little about this cancer that we don’t know that if you stop taking the treatments, it may roar back into life’.
“So I said: ‘Look, for an hour’s treatment every three weeks I think I can put up with that’ and it looks like these very clever people are going to keep me alive.”
Smith has remained in good spirits despite his cancer battle, even declaring on BBC Radio 5 Live that he had plans for his future.
“I’m now thinking of buying a new car. That’s not what you do if you’re going to die in March,” he said.
“I’m determined to have an electric car before I die. And I was speaking to a salesman. I said, ‘Now, what about the delivery? Can you get to me before I’m dead?’ And he’s so shocked! I said, ‘Come on, let’s have a giggle’.”
Regardless, Smith opted to leave Neighbours for his own wellbeing, with the character getting a fitting emotional send-off this week.
Smith first joined the show in 1987, with his character Harold becoming one of the defining faces on the long-running soap.
In the episode, Harold decided it was time to leave Ramsay Street, deciding to move to Port Douglas, Queensland in order to be close to his granddaughter, Sky.
The move also came shortly after the arrival of newcomer Agnes Adair at retirement facility Eirini Rising.
Due to her striking resemblance to his beloved late wife Madge, Harold struggled to live alongside her.
In a fitting reunion before Smith’s departure, Agnes was played by Anne Charleston – who actually DID play Madge from 1986 to 2001.
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