Linda Nolan made an emotional wish before she spent her last Christmas with her beloved sisters.
The Irish singer, actress and television star has sadly died today, aged 65, after living with cancer on and off for 20 years. Linda first rose to fame in the 1970s as part of The Nolans, alongside her sisters Anne, Coleen, Denise, Bernie, and their mother Maureen. The group sold 30 million records with hits such as Attention To Me, Gotta Pull Myself Together, and I’m In The Mood For Dancing.
In 2005, Linda was first diagnosed with breast cancer and went into remission a year later, but in 2016, it returned. The cancer had spread to her hip, and then to her liver in 2020. In 2023, doctors found two sizable tumours in her brain, and she was told it was not curable. The Mirror columnist was “so grateful” to make it to Christmas and had high hopes for the year ahead.
In a candid interview with The Mirror in December, Linda said she was scared Christmas 2024 would be her last one, as she dealt with incurable secondary breast cancer. “I try to stay positive”, the singer said honestly. “I’ll use jokes and humour as a way to cope, but of course it’s scary. And I have my days where I’m terribly down.”
Linda bravely said her Christmas wish was to “keep breathing and see another one”. She defiantly said: “I thought my 60th birthday would be my last, but I’m still here, five years later. It’s easy to sit back and get depressed about it, but I’m still going. My hope for 2025? To not die, obviously. I just want to be here with my family.”
Despite planning her own funeral, Linda wasn’t a fan of conversations about wills and finances. She said: “When people start talking about putting things in order – I don’t want to talk about that. I don’t want to think about my affairs. It’s so final. Every birthday, I want to make it to the next one. I have to be like that, I can’t be a grey cloud of doom.”
Linda is tragically the second Nolan sister to die of cancer, 12 years after Bernie Nolan passed away. The second youngest sister announced she had been diagnosed with breast cancer in April 2010. In October of the same year, Bernie said she was cancer-free after having a mastectomy, going through chemotherapy and taking Herceptin.
But, by the end of October 2012, Bernie’s cancer had returned. Doctors told the singer that the disease returned to her left breast, brain, lungs, liver and bones. The late star passed at her home in Surrey in July 2013, aged 52. “Bernie passed away peacefully this morning with all of her family around her,” a statement read at the time.
Sisters Anne and Coleen have also been diagnosed with cancer. Anne was the first sister to be diagnosed with the horrific disease in 2000. The 72-year-old went on to have stage three breast cancer in April 2020, while Linda found out about her liver cancer a few days later. Anne and Linda were side-by-side as they underwent chemotherapy and were determined to beat the disease.
“I don’t want to die. I love my life so much. I love my daughters, my grandchildren, my friends, all my family. I want to live for as long as I possibly can,” Anne told The Sun at the time. She discovered she had cancer for a second time when she found a lump while showering. Thankfully, the star went into remission for the second time after receiving the all-clear.
Loose Women star Coleen was told she had skin cancer in 2023. Revealing the shocking moment she found out, Coleen said: “My first instinct, typical me, was to laugh hysterically because I just thought that’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard anybody say. I’m sick of cancer. Also, my first instinct was, ‘I’m not telling anybody in my family’ because this… seems nothing compared to what my sisters have been through.”
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