Jay Aston has been diagnosed with mouth cancer and requires an operation to remove part of her tongue, which doctors fear may leave her unable to sing.
In an interview with the Daily Mirror, the Bucks Fizz star revealed that doctors found the cancerous cells after a recent biopsy on her tongue. Determined to continue performing with The Fizz despite the operation, she recorded vocals before undergoing the biopsy and lip-synched to them during recent shows. However the diagnosis means that surgeons must now remove around a centimetre of tissue from Jay’s tongue, as well as lymph glands to ensure that the disease has not spread.
The operation will leave Aston unable to sing for around a year. “They can’t say whether I’ll be able to sing like I used to,” she told the newspaper. “It’s made me realise I completely took my singing for granted.”
Aston also faces the possibility of further surgery should this operation fail to halt the spread of the disease. “I think if they take more of my tongue away the chances of me singing, even talking, will be very slim,” Jay admitted. Despite this, Aston spoke of her determination to remain strong for her family, bandmates and fans. “I have a young daughter, I want to see her grow up, I want to see her get married and see her grandchildren,” she told the Mirror.
Bucks Fizz became instant Eurovision legends in 1981 when they won the contest for the UK with Making Your Mind Up, thanks in no small part to their famous skirt-removing performance. Jay laughs that the iconic dance routine has become a consideration for her surgeons, who plan to remove a piece of skin from her leg to graft onto her tongue following the operation. “We talked about where to put the scar because I rip my skirt off, and they said they would try and make it higher so it doesn’t show so badly. But I can always hide my legs.”
After Making Your Mind Up hit number one, Bucks Fizz went on to score another eleven top forty hits in the next four years, including two more chart toppers The Land of Make Believe and My Camera Never Lies, but Aston quit after suffering a back injury when the group’s tour bus crashed in December 1984. After years of legal wranglings, Jay and her Bucks Fizz bandmates Mike Nolan and Cheryl Baker are currently enjoying a new wave of success as The Fizz, having scored a top thirty album The F-Z of Pop in 2017. “The thought of rejoining the band is now keeping me going,” Jay says. “Being on stage with them is my happy place. Whatever you go through, it doesn’t matter when you are on stage.”
