Singing legend Ó Sé says routine visit to doctor found cancer and saved his life

Traditional Irish singing legend Sean Ó Sé has spoken openly about his battle with cancer in the hope that it will encourage men over 50 to get regular health checks.

The man known for decades as “The Pocar” said if it wasn’t for a routine trip to his GP for a blood pressure check he wouldn’t be alive today.

“I’m alive because it was caught in time,” he said.

“I’m quite happy to talk about it. I want everybody to know I had it, and to let them know I survived it.

“If my doctor, Seamus Looney, hadn’t noticed I wasn’t looking well that day, I wouldn’t be talking to you today.”

Dr Looney ordered a barrage of blood tests which revealed Sean had colon cancer. And he said surgeons Colm O’Boyle and Brian Bird saved his life.

“I’m fighting fit now. People say I look well, I’m eating well, and I have a lot of energy,” he said.

“Having been through cancer, it does have its positives in a way.

“You wake up and say ‘this is a day I mightn’t have had otherwise — I might as well knock something out of it’.”

Sean was speaking ahead of the screening tonight of a TG4 documentary on his life and music.

It will feature an intimate musical performance which was recorded for TV one warm evening last July in Coughlan’s pub in Cork City.

Accompanied by two of this three children, Con and Áine, and by friends such as Mick Flannery, John Spillane, Jim Murray, and Peadar Ó Riada, Seán sang some of his favourite songs, including ‘Carrickfergus’, ‘The Banks of My Own Lovely Lee’, and ‘Beidh Aonach Amárach’.

Seán explains his choice of songs that evening, and talks about his memories of childhood days in Ballylickey in West Cork, and how his talent for singing eventually led him to collaborate with his good friend, the late composer Seán Ó Riada.

He recalls his life serving two masters — his job as a teacher on Cork’s northside, which he said always came first, and his singing.

“I never took a day off in my teaching career to go singing,” he said.

“Singing was for sport, but if there was jam, that was fine too.”

He traces the way his best-known song ‘An Poc ar Buile’, which was recorded in 1962, has been his passport to the world and gifted him with a singing career which has spanned six decades.

“It has been great to me and brought me all over the world,” he said.

He has performed it at Expo 2010 in Shanghai, at the National Folk Theatre in Cuba, and in Moscow, before a hall full of “official Russians”.

He described the Coughlan’s concert as a “magical night with his great friends”.

“Sometimes an evening can slip in to gear, and this one did,” he said.

“I wasn’t drinking but I was on a high, intoxicated by the music. It was one of those very, very special nights.

“You do get an occasion going through life, almost in a state of ecstasy in your surroundings — this was like that — and was one of the mos enjoyable shows I ever made.”

An Pocar will be screened on TG4 tonight at 9.25pm.