Charlie's cancer almost wrecked Stones' tour plans

Charlie Watts' throat cancer scare almost scuppered The Rolling Stones' A Bigger Bang world tour before it even started - frontman Mick Jagger insists he would have cancelled the whole thing if his bandmate was unable to hit the road.

Jagger reveals he was a bag of nerves when Watts told him of his diagnosis, and feared it might signal the end of the Stones' touring plans.

He tells music magazine Rolling Stone: "We had OK'd the tour. He was straight up about it, 'The doctor says I have a 90 per cent chance of being completely cured.'

"I would have been in such a state. If Charlie had said: 'I can't do this tour, I've faced mortality,' we would have had to change our minds.

"No one pressured him but the treatments couldn't have been easy. I kept worrying, 'Is he eating.'"

Meanwhile, Watts' 2004 health scare made bandmate Keith Richards realise how amazing the drummer is: "He looked exactly the same (after the treatment), like he hadn't done anything more than comb his hair and put a suit on."