the us vice president has walked out of an american football match after some players knelt during the national anthem. mike pence said he left the game in indiana between the colts and the san francisco 49ers because he would not dignify any event which showed such disrespect. many children are feared drowned after a boat carrying rohingyas refugees fleeing violence in myanmar capsized. at least 12 people are thought to be dead and many others are missing. bangladeshi coastguard officials said the boat was overloaded with about 100 people on board. hundreds of thousands of people have been on the streets of barcelona in a huge show of support for the unity of spain and against plans for the independence of catalonia. spain's worst political crisis for decades was sparked by a referendum on independence for the wealthy north—eastern region. now on bbc news, hardtalk. welcome to hardtalk, i'm stephen

sackur. we're all familiar with rock music's living legends. thinkjagger or springsteen. perhaps more intriguing are rock and roll‘s cult heros, the artists who have inspired other artists without getting massive rewards. my my guest today wilko johnson fits that bill. his raw guitar sound in the band dr feelgood paved the way for punk. he's kept on rocking through cancer, depression and changing musical tastes. so what keeps him going? wilkojohnson, welcome to hardtalk. thank you.

i want to start in 2013. when you were diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer. i believe the doctors said you had less than a year to live and yet, here you sit with me. how weird is that? it's very weird. in fact, it's stranger now for me to try and look back and imagine, imagine that year i spent expecting... death? death, yes. i think of waking up every morning with that, and i can't... you know, i can't... i mean, i'm back in the world now, so... and yet, one of the striking and for many people, strange things about the way you responded was that you refused chemo. you said you didn't want any of that. and you carried on making music, playing the gigs around the world? yeah, well they gave

me the diagnosis. told me that my pancreatic cancer, that it was terminal, and it was inoperable. there was nothing they could do. and that i had something less than a year to live. and they said they could give me chemotherapy. but that they couldn't cure it. they couldn't stop it. all they could do was slow it down. in fact they said you know, without chemo, you know, i might last ten months. and with chemo i might last a year. so it's not difficult. so ijust told them i didn't want to lose my hair! but not only did you reject chemotherapy, you actually went back out on the road. i remember reading about one extraordinary gig in, i think it was in tokyo, where they knew that

you were terminally ill. the huge audience there, i mean half of them were in tears? about two thirds of them, i think! no, it was... while the tumour was growing inside me and in fact, it was swelling, it was very visible, it was swelling, my stomach was swelling right out. you mean actually onstage? yes, in fact my guitar used to actually rock on the thing! so i was always aware of this thing. normally when you stand with your guitar, it lies flat across your stomach. this tumour was pushing out, so... were you in pain? no, this is the thing. although this thing was so obtrusive, it... there wasn't any pain, or not much. i mean, i would get, i would feel sick and there was blood occasionally. but no pain. when they gave me the diagnosis i said well, how long you know,

can i expect to kind of be walking around, and what's going to happen when it hits me? and they said, when it hits you, you know, you're going to go through all the cancer things. and my wife died 13 years ago of cancer. and i witnessed this, the terrible, it's terrible. and they said well, you know, sooner or later the symptoms will commence. and that will knock me off my feet. but right as it was, i was ok. so i thought well, i said you know, have i got maybe six months? and they said, yeah. so i said well, 0k, there'sjust enough time to do a farewell tour! which we did. and at time, that was in the first

part of the year, my sole ambition was just to stay well enough to finish this tour. but what is fascinating about your psychology and your response to all of this unimaginable, horrible stuff, is that you said, you know, with the terminal diagnosis, you felt free. you said free from the future and the past. free from everything but the moment that i'm in now. yes, this is true. in fact, when they gave me the diagnosis, i wasn't expecting them to tell me i've got cancer. i suppose i had my suspicions, but it was a surprise. but when they told me, i remember sitting, i was absolutely calm. i felt absolutely calm.

and the doctor told me some things and then i walked home. i remember walking out of the hospital, which is quite near to where i live, i was going to walk home and it was a beautiful winter's day. and looking up, blue sky and seeing the trees against the clouds and thinking, it's beautiful. i'm alive. it felt so intense. i was looking at those trees and thinking, i'm alive, i'm alive. and by the time i got home, i was almost ecstatic. which is fascinating because you are a man who has suffered from quite severe depression at many different times in your life? sounds like getting a death sentence would have cheered you up! well, there you go! i mean, why i get the misery as i call it, i do not know. it's just something i've had all my life. but when that happened to me, it literally went away. because kind of you got a different way of looking

at things, you know. and by the time i got home from the hospital, i was feeling so high that i was thinking, maybe this is like delayed shock or something. in a moment i'm going to collapse in a heap, you know. but i didn't. and itjust carried on like that. and... it sounds terrible to say it, but in a funny sort of way, your very public and honest acknowledgement that you had a terminal illness and the fact that you then went on a farewell tour, a lot of people started writing about the heritage of your music. the degree to which you had influenced a whole genre of hard rock which, you know then morphed into punk in the late 1970s, i mean, you said it yourself in a very dry turn of phrase. you said it turned out cancer was a great career move! well, it was, actually. i mean, i don't know quite how it happened. but my case got, i don't know, somehow or other the media got hold of it. i think it was that we'd had to cancel a couple of local gigs and just made an announcement on the website, on our website, that we were cancelling some gigs. and then i said why.

and somehow or other it got into the news. and i was, i mean from here to new york, i mean in fact in america, i had a small part in game of thrones, i was being reported as actor, wilkojohnson. well many of your audience will love game of thrones. you were the rather grim mute executioner in i think it was series one. a nasty piece of work! you didn't have many lines, clearly, because you were mute! this is what was great, i have never done any acting before and when i got this part, the guy has had his tongue cut out, he can't speak, there is no lines. all i'd got do was give people dirty looks, really! which is what you did

throughout your career, frankly, onstage! i could do that! yes. i suppose i'm wondering about whether it was quite gratifying, you know, when somebody is very publicly gravely ill and appears to be dying, in a sense, because you're not actually dead, you can get to see the nature of your own epitaph or obituary. and you must have realised that your music and going all the way back to the early 1970s and you founding dr feelgood, your music it turns out meant a huge amount to an awful lot of people? well, i certainly found out and as you say, it was the kind of thing, one of the first things i did after my diagnosis and before i did a farewell tour, i actually went to japan which is a place i love very much. and actually did a couple of improvised gigs. kyoto and one in tokyo. in aid of the disaster fund

for the fu kushima disaster. and i mean, the news was on the internet then the whole sort of, the place was packed out. there were people on the street, tv screens on the street. and ijust... i don't know, i mean you step out in front of an audience like that and you can't go wrong. and the kind of, the feeling was... i remember leaving the stage in kyoto and you walk up the stairs and you're looking down on the crowd. and we are singing bye—byejohnny, and we're singing bye—bye, waving. and looking down at this crowd. and all these kind ofjapanese faces all in tears, you know going bye—bye! that must‘ve been intensely moving? it was, it was really moving. but i didn't feel sad. i just thought, this is great show business!

well, wilko, we've got to get to the next bit. you didn't die. in fact, bizarrely, a surgeon who also was a bit of a rock and roll photographer, he came i know to one of your gigs, he photographed you, he looked at what was happening to your tumour and he said, i'm not sure you're terminal. i think somebody could help you. this is true. charlie chan, such is his name, was, we were playing after the farewell tour, i was still on my feet. so we continued on into the summer doing festivals. and we were playing at a festival and charlie was there and he was taking photographs. and we were talking. i suppose we must have talked about my illness. i found out he was in fact a cancer surgeon. and then some months later towards the end of the year, charlie came to my house and said, he thought there was something strange about this.

because if i was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer injanuary, by then i should have either been dead or very, very sick. but i was in fact still on my feet. there was something strange, this was not the usual... by now the tumour was absolutely huge. my stomach was swollen. and he told me he would like me to go and see mr emanuel huget, who is a surgeon at addenbrooke‘s hospital. and see what he thought. and he took a look at the thing and said he thought they could do it. and that was such... cut it out? yes. and then sitting with mr huget telling me, describing, you know, describing my case and saying what he thought they could do. and i'm sitting there, and this is a year later, and i'm thinking, is this guy telling me he can save my life? weird beyond weird, you know. and i remember walking

away from that meeting, actually laughing and thinking, this is stupid. i mean, you wouldn't accept this in a soap opera! to cut this gory story a little bit short, you had a massive surgery, i think it lasted ten hours or something. and he cut out a three kilograms tumour? yes. and in essence, he saved your life. are you still totally in remission? yes, i go for a scan every six months. and they keep an eye on things. but i'm 0k. so here you are with the sort of second life? yes. i mean, i think you've turned 70? yes. it must feel almost like you're a newborn! yes! i mean, i think i learned during that time that you just never know what's going to happen. i mean, i never thought, as you say,

i turned 70 last month. i didn't think that was going to happen. i never thought that was going to happen anyway! i certainly didn't think it since 2013. and... i mean, i've heard a lot of rock and roll stories. quite a few weird ones in this studio. but yours is pretty unique. i mean, it's extraordinary. yeah. then after university you became a teacher, but you fell into rock and roll. but notjust any old rock and roll, really raw sort of down and dirty rock and roll. some call that punk rock. but it's just basically kids being loud and a little bit obnoxious in a very raw rock and roll way? how did you get from being a teacher and quite a literary guy, to doing that? well, as you say i became a teacher.

and while i was doing that i was still living in my hometown ca nvey island and... that's an essex, on the east coast? yes, on the estuary. quite an unusual place. ca nvey island, man, it's below sea level! i was born below sea level! it's a very special place because it's sort ofjust above the thames estuary, but very isolated, even though it's quite close to london? yes, canvey island changes all the time, actually. last time i went over there, i mean, people often want to interview me over there. and i was going over there recently with a camera crew and people like that. and we went to canvey and i got lost because itjust keeps changing all the time! i mean, when i was a kid it was more or less rural. there was nothing there but dirt roads and oil depots and things like that.

but it's kind of like a new town now. but your brand of rock and roll, that's what i'm really interested in. because it was very sort of raw, energetic, and some say it had in it a spirit of punk. do you see it that way? well, it all kind of fitted together. i mean we started the band, dr feelgood, in the early ‘70s. that's as i say when i was a schoolteacher. and we were exactly like any local band, we were just you know, local friends and we wanted to play rock and roll. and the kind of thing we wanted to play was the sort of thing really that the rolling stones brought to this country. you know. although this is the early ‘70s and rock and roll wasn't like that any more. it was all kind of, i don't know what they call it. well there was a lot of glam rock. and sort of supergroups. huge electronic, you know playing to 6 million people.

pink floyd, led zeppelin, deep purple. all that kind of thing. and we just wanted to play this rock and roll thing. simpler stuff? and we were just doing this locally. it wasn't very fashionable, but we liked it. and we found it entertained us more and entertained the people more, not only were we playing this stuff but we were kind of you know... edgy. yeah, you know... # i like to fly but i stick close to the ground. # if i get too high somebody will shoot me down. # used to be a time when you could get your fun. # didn't have to watch yourself with anyone. # but it seems like these days everybody‘s carrying a gun. # i had a girl, as fine as she could be...#

a lot of people likejohn lydon, johnny rotten, sex pistols and paul weller and others said you know what, dr feelgood were a really big deal in the way we developed our sound. and john lydon was full of anger on stage. were you genuinely full of anger and sort of giving a finger to the authorities? no, i mean, as i say when we started playing locally, in the first couple of years we were just playing locally around southend. you know. hometown. and we found we could, i don't know, entertain people, could provoke more of a reaction. you know, the fans then, they would stand with their backs to the audience and looking at their shoes and playing all these, you know. we were giving it a bit of, you know?

and we'd kind of worked this things, we got pretty good at it. and when we started playing in london a couple of years later, it was instantly, people took to this. and i think most of the guys that were going to start the punk bands were watching us, actually. well, they have actually said that. and the next year the punk bands all started coming. but here's the brutal question, did you care that while punk took off, sex pistols and others you know, made a huge amount of money, became world—famous and the generation before you, the stones and all of those big rock groups, they made a pile of money. dr feelgood, although you had a cult following and a loyal audience, you never became commercially a massive band. well, this was because in factjust as the punk bands were coming out, doctor feelgood, we were kind of on the way out.

we had a one number one, our third album went straight into number one. a live album. and we were ready to go, we'd started touring america, we were ready to go and do it. we were doing our fourth album, we had this huge argument and they chucked me out of the band. that was right when the punk thing was happening. why, why did they chuck you out of the band? because they're idiots! obviously there may be another point of view! but you know, bands are famous for having what they call artistic differences. but what were your differences? i don't think there was anything artistic about dr feelgood! no, it'sjust... i don't know. just didn't get on? there was this huge argument and it went on all night long and by the morning, everybody is well, blow you. and anyway, yeah, they threw me out of the band and they went on that

way really, rather wretched. and i carried on. and i carried on my own a while and then ijoined ian dury and the blockheads and i spent some time with them. you've had your own band for 30 years? yeah, right. all of us ex—blockheads, actually. yes. i talked earlier about depression and i just wonder whether, and depression is a difficult thing and there is no single cause. but was there an element of disappointment in your career that was part of your depression, do you think? oh no, no. i'm miserable wherever i go! whatever i'm doing, i contrive to be miserable! i could contrive to be miserable in the garden of eden, i'm sure! it's just the way you are, you know.

yeah, yeah. i mean my brother, and we're very close, but he's nothing like that at all. he doesn't suffer from that. tell me about the music scene today, because you're about to play the royal albert hall. as i say, you've kept yourfan base throughout your career. but if you look at the music scene today, imagine yourself, the young wilko, growing up in canvey island. the kids today when they grow up, they don't want it seems to me, to play loud, edgy, energetic guitar music, rock and roll, blues—based music. they all want to be on the x factor, on a talent competition, with an auto—tune machine. do you think that's changed? well as you said, man, i'm 70! i don't know anything about young people! so what they're doing, i don't know. but if they're having a good time, then good. 0n the note of looking forward to you playing many more gigs,

wilko johnson, thank you for being on hardtalk. thank you. thank you very much indeed. hello, once again the weekend has been marked by relatively benign conditions for most areas. and at its best we saw decent spells of sunshine boosting the temperatures to around about 17 or 18 degrees. but there's no escaping the fact that, in some spots, there was quite a bit of cloud around as well. and for some the odd bit and piece of rain. that's pretty much how we start the new day on monday. not a shock to the system as you step out —

temperatures for the most part in double figures. a lot of cloud around. probably at its thickest perhaps across parts of scotland. weak weather fronts here, just dragging cloud and rain, from west to east to many areas. northern ireland perhaps a little bit drier, just a fraction brighter. certainly as we come south of the border, the greater part of england and wales is dry. bright at best, probably, maybe the odd hint of sunshine. that won't be the case across parts of the far south of wales and south—west england. the air is moister here, the cloud sitting very low in the atmosphere, and there could be some drizzly rain on breeze as well. i'm hopeful that that situation will improve as the day really gets going. i think brighter skies too, eventually, getting into parts of wales, the north of england and certainly for scotland, after that rather dismal start. northern ireland, i have not forgotten you, it's just that you started off quite bright and then the cloud fills in, with rain into many areas by around about teatime and early evening and that is exactly the moment at which wales and the republic of ireland will clash horns in a crucial world cup qualifying match, in wales.

0vernight, there will be quite a bit of rain across the northern half of britain. that same weather front though, as it moves into the southern half of britain, is not much more than a band of cloud, with the odd spot of rain, perhaps. brighter skies follow on behind, though no too many isobars there. so that turns out to be a decent afternoon for many spots, save for this north—western quarter, where we are seeing the first signs of a wet night and a pretty wet and windy day too, as these weather fronts pile in from the atlantic. some heavy rain on the western hills of scotland, across the cumbrian fells, top end of the pennines, eventually down into the welsh mountains. ahead of it, the cloud just fills in but you stay dry for the greater part of the day. behind it, things begin to improve. certainly dries out and that is the shape of things to come, for many of us through thursday. still a little bit breezy perhaps but a lot of dry weather around and some brightness as well. that all comes to us thanks to this albeit transient ridge of high pressure. because it's elbowed aside by the next set of weather fronts

coming in from the atlantic. notice again, we have a number of isobars there so we finish the week, perhaps for many, with a combination of wet and windy weather. this is bbc news. i'm lucy grey. our top stories: as thousands protest in barcelona calling for spanish unity it's still not clear if catalonia will declare independence. oscar—winning film producer harvey weinstein is sacked following new information about alleged misconduct. the us vice president walks out of an american football game after some players refuse to stand for the national anthem. 0n the move. businesses in catalonia relocate their legal headquarters for fear of isolation if the region declares independence from spain. and it was hailed as a system to simplify tax collection across india. 100 days on, we talk to businesses who are struggling to make the change.