LEIGH SALES, PRESENTER: The 2016 Paralympic games are currently underway in Rio and you may have seen an amazing promotional video for the event. It has gone viral around the world.

'Beware the super humans' campaign put together by Channel 4 in the United Kingdom, features dozens of people with disabilities doing all sorts of things set to a tune made famous by Sammy Davis Junior in 1964 called Yes, I Can.

One of the musicians featured in the ad is an Australian. This is his story.

(Extract of Beware the Super Humans television promotion)

REPORTER: This is Neill Duncan - father, teacher, cancer survivor, saxophonist.

(Extract of Beware the Super Humans television promotion)

And this is the ad for the 2016 Paralympic games.

(Extract of Beware the Super Humans television promotion)

NEILL DUNCAN, MUSICIAN: There was a Brazilian guy with no, pretty much no arms, just pretty little, tiny little stumps that played an incredible piano.

The bass player who became a very close friend was just kind of hardcore punk bass player from Arkansas. I think it was and he had a hook.

(Extract of Beware the Super Humans television promotion)

There was a Down Syndrome boy who played beautiful alto saxophone.

(Extract of Beware the Super Humans television promotion)

I felt like one armed saxophone, compared to some of these people I felt like a fraud.

Be a couple of minutes and we can be there, won't be long.

LEIGH SALES: At rehearsal these days, Neill is a bit slower to set up his gear than he used to be. Just four years ago he was still doing everything with both arms.

In late 2012, he noticed a fast growing lump on his left arm. Doctors diagnosed a sarcoma, a very rare, extremely aggressive form of cancer.

Two rounds of intense chemotherapy did nothing to arrest its spread.

NEILL DUNCAN: It was Friday and he said you need to come in on Monday and have it amputated. You've got the weekend to decide whether you want to enjoy what you've got for a little bit longer, like we're talking months or have your amputation.

And I had four young children; so of course, my decision was I need to live. I need to be there for my kids.

OK, you kickoff, Floyd.

LEIGH SALES: For a man supporting his family solely through music, the loss of an arm was absolutely devastating.

But more than that, it was also the loss of his lifelong passion.

NEILL DUNCAN: Game over.

LEIGH SALES: Neill's wife Rachael didn't want to spend that last weekend before the operation moping.

NEILL DUNCAN: So she got on to social media and organised a huge party to celebrate my two arms.

Twenty musicians came from all over New South Wales. They gave up their gigs and all came on a Sunday night to our home in the Blue Mountains, 300 people turned up.

It was an incredibly magical in a strange way, it was a very sad night but it was also an incredibly beautiful night and that was everybody including myself, knew at that stage that that would be the very last time I play music. The last time I play the saxophone.

LEIGH SALES: The next morning, Neill went to hospital for his amputation.

NEILL DUNCAN: Just about to go in and they put a mark around your arm where they are going to chop it off and I said do you mind going below my tattoo and he said okay.

Things like that, it's crazy stuff but then I woke up in hospital and Rachael was there not, the family was there not and my close friend, Mike Lira was there.

LEIGH SALES: He is in your band, right?

NEILL DUNCAN: He was in band called Darth Vegas and he couldn't contemplate not playing any music together any more.

And he was there all excited when I woke up in hospital. It's not over. It's not over. There is something out there.

LEIGH SALES: What was it that he had found?

NEILL DUNCAN: There is a man in Amsterdam, Martin, from, his company is called Flute Lab. He had made some flutes for people who had strokes and so Michael contacted him and said can you make a one handed tenor saxophone? He said yep and so it all started.

LEIGH SALES: When Neill got home, he had to start adapting all of his every day routines to his new circumstances.

From looking after the kids, to driving himself around.

Pretty soon he had another challenge too - mastering a new saxophone, especially rigged for a one armed player.

Two years after that first party, everyone came back to Neill's house to hear what they thought they would never hear again, Neill on the sax.

(Neill Duncan playing the saxophone)

NEILL DUNCAN: People often say to me, you've lost an arm, and I go "Well, you just adapt. You have to adapt. Every day you find something you haven't done before, every day.

Just some little thing, you go "oh right, I haven't done that. That is a simple task but it's not one I've done."

Opening a can, cause most of the can, but the other day I had one, hmm but then you sit down and you work it out, you use your feet, you use your knees.

(Extract of Beware the Super Humans television promotion)

LEIGH SALES: Then something happened that Neill would never have imagined possible. Somebody in the UK saw him playing his one armed sax on YouTube.

NEILL DUNCAN: So I get a message from Channel 4 saying they are making a Paralympics ad and they want to this time focus not only on the athletes and on the arts as well and they are thinking of putting together a big disabled swing band.

Funny using that word "disabled" because that's one thing I kind of, that I learnt when I was over there, that these people aren't disabled, they are very able.

LEIGH SALES: Neill was blown away when he learned it would be filmed at the Abbey Road studios made famous by The Beatles and countless other music legends.

NEILL DUNCAN: That photo is fabulous. I think it better than The Beatles photo because there is a hook, there is me with one arm, someone with no arms, there's the straight guy who has had a stroke, so he's not straight at all. There's the Downs boy, it's, yeah, it's a bunch of freaks crossing the crossing. It's such a cool photo.

LEIGH SALES: Imagine if somebody had said to you that weekend when you were saying goodbye to your sax, oh actually, Neill, you are not saying good bye to your fax phone, in a few years, you will be playing it in Abbey Road.

NEILL DUNCAN: It has been an amazing journey; it's been an amazing journey. I mean, it has been horrific, this happening obviously.

And I still have a lot of pain, a lot of phantom pain and all that stuff. But it has been an absolute blessing. It has taken me to places I never dreamt of going.

It has taught me things I would not have learned. If the cancer has really made me realise, has really taught me about the generosity of the human spirit for a start.

It has taught me about compassion and love and those things are something that only cancer can do that sometimes.

(Music - Neill Duncan on saxophone and Leigh Sales on the piano)

LEIGH SALES: What a pleasure for me to get to do that, Neill, thank you so much.