90s pop legend in comeback for cancer-stricken daughter - 'I was battling to save her life'
Kenny Thomas may be have been one of the biggest pop stars of the 90’s, with eight Top 40 singles and two Top 10 albums under his belt, but as is often the way for musicians, his 30-year career has been full of highs and lows.
However, for the last 7 and a half years, the Thinking About Your Love singer has had much bigger things on his mind than his next hit, as he’s been battling to save the life of his daughter Christina, was diagnosed with a brain tumour at just 4 years old.
London-born Kenny, 56, who has four children with his wife Francisca, says of his daughter’s illness: “It came like a bolt out of the blue and turned out lives upside down. I don’t think it’s been upright since.”
Christina, now 11, started to show signs of something not being quite right in October, 2016, but it took months for doctors to realise what was wrong.
Kenny says: “It started off with a limp in her right leg and we thought it was muscular. She had an X-ray and they couldn’t see anything so they referred us to a neurologist. But whilst waiting for that she started to go downhill quite fast and her right hand lost power. It was quite dramatic.”
After demanding a scan during a trip to A&E, Kenny and his wife were given the devastating news that Christina had a brain tumour. “Doctors diagnosed it as a glioma tumour and they were honest about the fact there wasn’t much they could do,” says Kenny. “Judging by the symptoms of deterioration, they said we had about six months.”
The only treatment option available to Christina in the UK was chemotherapy, but Kenny and his wife were unconvinced it was the right option for their daughter.
He says: “We decided not to go for chemo, as they couldn’t show me a child in a similar situation to Christina who they’d cured with it.”
Kenny’s decision was undoubtedly influenced by the tragic loss of his mother, who was diagnosed with stomach cancer in her 50’s. “You never get over something that’s traumatic for you and I saw chemo kill my mother in 1999 when I was 30. She was 56, which is how old I am now. The doctors admitted that she’d had a very bad reaction to chemo and that it killed her before the cancer could.”
Kenny’s decision to avoid chemo was also down to the fact that in 2010, he got a degree in Chinese medicine. “I was talking to doctors in India and Germany and looking at things like immunotherapy. An Indian professor told me that if I was looking for the holy grail of treatment for brain tumours, I should be looking at dendritic cell therapy in Germany.”
Kenny knew that this treatment was going to come at a huge cost. “We were financially comfortable but my career wasn’t flying like it was in the 90s,” he says. “I was working out what money I could access from assets and I remortgaged, but a really good friend said I needed to fundraise.”
He explains: “Even if we had to sell up and live in a caravan to save her life, I’d do it. But my friends advised me that I couldn’t do it alone. Fundraising was difficult in the sense that some details about our daughter that felt intensely private and sad were made public. But the one thing it did is restore my faith in humanity. The amount of people in the music industry who rallied round me and did concerts to raise money, it was a real testament to how amazing people are.”
He says, “The first people to step up were artists from the soul music community, such as Jocelyn Brown and Omar. And then after that I was doing vocals with Living in a Box, and Marcus Vere from the band said he was going to put a couple of nights on in Chelsea to raise money with stars such as Tony Hadley, Midge Ure, Kim Wild, Carol Decker, Heaven 17, Go West, Beverley Knight and Nick Kershaw. So the people that came to that gig were seeing all the biggest singers from the 80’s.”
“I had to pinch myself,” he admits. “They were all doing this for Christina and they raised about 40K.”
In total, Kenny took Christina to Germany 15 times for her treatment. But then she started having seizures in 2022.
Kenny says: “Her tumour had been stable but a cyst appeared next to it and that was probably the reason for the seizure. By that stage a new set of oncologists told me about new medicine that was available in the UK.”
He continues: “After a biopsy, they realised her tumour isn’t a glioma, it’s a diffuse leptomeningeal glioneuronal tumour.
“It’s still in one of the most deadliest places in the brain, and it’s still done it’s damage. She’s disabled, her right leg is weak, her right arm is not really functional, she’s partially sighted and cognitively, she’s at the level of a 6-7 year old.”
But the upshot of this new diagnosis is that Christina now has access to a gene inhibitor medicine, and initial scans showed a reduction in the size of her tumour.
When Kenny talks about his daughter, it’s clear just how strong their bond is. The star, who is also dad to Angela, 13, Joe, 10 and Jude, 7, says: “Christina’s the brightest spark in the world and she’s always laughing. Me and her were always connected, even before she was ill. I love my all my kids the same, but I’ve got quite a wacky sense of humour and she gets it and will laugh herself silly.”
He adds: “Sometimes life feels so normal and then you remember that she’ll never go trampolining again. And she’ll never ride that bike I bought for her before she fell ill. She’s a special little soul and I don’t know why she’s been given such a huge burden to carry in life.”
In terms of how he’s coped with the stress of the last 7 and a half years, Kenny admits that at times he and his wife have felt utterly “heartbroken”, but his faith and his music have kept him going. “I’m a man of faith, but there are days when I find it overpowering. When I’m on stage there’s an hour and a half where I can focus on nothing else apart from the songs, the words, the moment. But then you come off stage and you can be hit by this feeling of going back to the real world.”
In terms of what the future looks like, work-wise things are flying again for Kenny, who lives with his family in Norfolk, and he’s got a busy summer ahead performing at festivals, before kicking off his UK Outstanding Greatest Hits Tour in October. But even in the quieter career moments, Kenny says he was just as happy singing in a “boozer” or a working man’s club as he is in the London Palladium.
On a personal level, Kenny says if Christina’s illness has taught him anything, it’s how to be present. “I live in the day. I don’t know what the next day will bring. I don’t know if I’ll get a phone call in the next ten minutes to tell me she’d had a seizure. So you take it how it is, which is that she’s here and she’s got a great quality of life. Every day is a blessing."
