Russell watson comeback tour comes to Beaulieu

Oh it’s so good to be back, you just wouldn’t believe,” Russell Watson chuckles as he is chauffeured around sunny Manchester on the way to a rehearsal for his comeback tour.

It’s a sentence I’m not surprised to hear from a singer who has had lengthy breaks from the business in recent years.

But his was no ordinary spell out of the limelight – and the sense of relief in his voice is telling.

The operatic tenor has overcome two life-threatening illnesses to reinvigorate his career with the new tour, which includes a date in aid of the Muscular Dystrophy Campaign at Beaulieu next month.

Russell tells me: “Now I’m strong again and my voice is back to where it was, I’m getting back to what I do best.

“It’s good to be back, singing the classical repertoire. In fact, it’s just an absolute delight to be back on stage.”

The return to performance is something the 43-year-old could never have imagined possible when he was lying in his hospital bed in a critical condition.

Russell, dubbed The Voice, had a lump on his vocal chord removed in 2002 after experiencing problems with his voice.

He went on to suffer another major health scare and had an emergency operation to remove a brain tumour in 2006.

He was back under the knife a year later following a return of the aggressive tumour and had a course of radiotherapy to treat the recurrent problem in 2008.

“Little did I know that while I was having that throat op, a bloody great big lump was growing on my skull,” he jokes.

“My career has been threatened. But, to be honest, when my life was threatened the last thing on my mind was whether I’d sing again. It was whether I’d breathe again, whether I was going to make it through, whether I’d see my children (daughters Rebecca and Hannah) grow up.

“I’d gone through operations and radiotherapy and I was hanging onto life so to speak. It was a pretty turbulent period and singing seemed pretty immaterial.

But Russell, has returned to the live arena – saying it’s all he’s ever known.

His story is an inspirational one. From humble beginnings in Salford, the son of a factory worker and a shop worker, his meteoric rise to an international singing sensation has seen him sell millions of records worldwide and perform for the likes of HRH The Queen and Pope John Paul II.

But success did not happen overnight. Russell was a bolt cutter by day and sang in the working men’s clubs of the North West by night.

It was here that his big break came when the former chairman of his beloved Manchester United asked him to perform Nessun Dorma ahead of their title-winning match in 1999, a gig which was to set him on the road to superstardom.

“Singing in back street pubs and clubs, I really got a feel for what normal people wanted – and that was definitely classical music done in a different way.

“No-one had put Nessun Dorma and Ultravox’s Vienna on the same record ever before.

“But I wanted to and the record company supported me – and so the classical crossover was born.”

Life’s successes and knocks have caused Russell, who has now forged out a successful TV career with appearances on Last Choir Standing and Just The Two Of Us, to rethink things.

“There’s no question I’ve had such a run of bad fortune with my health, it definitely makes you re-evaluate your life.

“I try to see myself not as a victim, but as a survivor. You’re going to get knocked down in life, but it’s not about how many times you get knocked down, it’s how many times you get back up.

“The recovery period from a serious illness gives you a wake up call. For the first few months I thought I’d never take anything for granted, but of course you find yourself falling back into old ways.

“But whatever happens, I now know life really is special.”

Source: Hampshire Society