This article is more than 11 months old

This article is more than 11 months old

Sir Elton John has revealed he was “24 hours from death” after contracting an infection following treatment for prostate cancer.

The singer, 72, was diagnosed in 2017 and opted for surgery rather than chemotherapy because he did not want the disease “hanging over” his family.

John wrote in his memoir, Me, which is being serialised in the Daily Mail, that the surgery in Los Angeles was a “complete success” but he noticed something was not right 10 days later.

“It turned out that I had a rare complication from the operation.” He spent 11 days in a London hospital after lying awake at night “wondering if I was going to die”.

It encouraged his decision to retire from touring so he could spend more time with his husband, David Furnish, and their sons, Zachary and Elijah.

“In the hospital, alone at the dead of night, I’d prayed: please don’t let me die, please let me see my kids again, please give me a little longer,” he wrote.

“In a strange way, it felt like the time I spent recuperating was the answer to my prayers: if you want more time, you need to learn to live like this, you have to slow down.

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“It was like being shown a different life, a life I realised I loved more than being on the road. Music was the most wonderful thing, but it still didn’t sound as good as Zachary chattering about what had happened at Cubs or football practice.

“Any lingering doubts about retiring from touring just evaporated.”

John, who is currently on his Farewell Yellow Brick Road tour, also revealed in his book that he fell out with Diana, Princess of Wales, after she withdrew from an agreement to write the foreword to a book for his Aids foundations.

They reconciled on the day the fashion designer Gianni Versace was murdered.