Bucks Fizz singer Jay on surviving cancer
The Bucks Fizz singer tells Elizabeth Archer why she is lending her voice to a campaign for sign language to be taught in schools
My biggest fear was leaving Josie. I want to see her grow up and have children
AS Bucks Fizz star Jay Aston stood in a recording studio belting out the final notes of a new song, tears streamed down her face. When she glanced at bandmates Cheryl Baker and Mike Nolan, they were sobbing too.
Earlier that day, Jay had been diagnosed with mouth cancer.
The song’s title, Here to Eternity, seemed especially poignant. “It felt ominous that I was singing that song on that day,” said Jay, 58, who lives in Kent with husband Dave Colquhoun and their 16-year-old daughter Josie.
“It was very emotional and we were all crying at the end.”
Now, 18 months on, the song is due to be released on The Fizz’s (as they’re now known) new album, Smoke and Mirrors. And Jay is cancer free. “Surviving cancer really makes you re-evaluate your life,” she said.
She is keen to raise awareness of the importance of being able to communicate. When she was in hospital after surgery to remove the tumour, she was mute for 10 days.
Now she has joined calls for Makaton – a language combining signs and sounds designed to help the hearing communicate with the deaf – to be taught in schools.
When Here to Eternity is released on Friday, the video will feature signing from Isabella Signs, a YouTube star who learned sign language to communicate with her younger brother Lucas, who has Down’s syndrome. Jay’s battle with cancer began in 2015 when her dentist noticed she had an autoimmune condition called lichen planus.
The condition causes a rash and can appear anywhere on the body, although it is common in the mouth.
“For me, it looked a little bit like a white cobweb on my tongue,” said Jay. “My dentist pointed it out during a check-up. I hadn’t really noticed it.”
Then, during a routine dental appointment in January 2018, her dentist noticed the lichen planus had begun to spread from the front to the back of her tongue and advised her to get it looked at again.
In April, she had the biopsy – there were pre-cancerous cells in her tongue and she would need some of it removed.
But after the initial surgery in May came more devastating news. The section of tongue they’d removed had cancerous cells throughout and they couldn’t yet tell where else they’d spread to.
Jay was devastated. “I wrote my will out,” she said. “You plan for the worst but hope for the best.”
Jay is not alone. In the last 25 years, incidence of mouth cancer has increased 135 per cent, according to the Mouth
Cancer Foundation, up more than 60 per cent in the last 10 years alone.
Jay was particularly concerned about her daughter, who was preparing for her GCSEs. “My biggest fear was leaving Josie. I want to live to see her grow up, get married and maybe have grandchildren.”
Jay rushed to record the remaining vocals for The Fizz’s album before having the surgery. Then, in June 2018, she had a seven-hour operation to remove 40 per cent of her tongue.
Surgeons fashioned a new tongue using tissue from Jay’s thigh, which was fed into her mouth through her neck. Finally, they removed her top teeth in case she needed to have chemo or radiotherapy.
Afterwards, she was in agony. She said: “I looked like I’d been to a Halloween party. I was very swollen up and it was pretty grim.”
Because of the tracheotomy, she couldn’t talk, and had to communicate using a whiteboard.
Then, 10 days after the operation, her surgeon came to tell her there was no trace of cancer left.
“I cried tears of joy,” Jay said. Since then, the road to recovery has been a long one. She has a seven-inch scar on her thigh and one on her neck. But after months of physio, she can speak again and only has a slight lisp.
Meanwhile, her bandmates have been incredibly supportive.
“We’ve had our moments but there’s something that bonds us together,” Jay said.