Russell Watson Reveals Suicidal Thoughts Amidst Brain Tumour Pain

Singer Russell Watson has revealed he briefly considered suicide as he struggled with the agonising pain of a brain tumour.

The popular tenor, 58, said he contemplated jumping from a hotel balcony and admitted it was only the thought of his two young daughters being left without a dad that pulled him back from the brink.

Russell had suffered excruciating headaches for months before finally being diagnosed with a pituitary tumour in 2006 while recording an album in Los Angeles. Doctors told him he needed urgent surgery.

Speaking to Kaye Adams on her How To Be 60 podcast, the singer – the UK’s best-selling classical artist of all time – said: ‘My whole world came crashing down and the pain got worse – everything was exacerbated with the news of what he’d just told me.

‘I was staying in a hotel in Beverly Hills and I was on the 8th floor and it was the first time I’d ever felt this way.

‘I can’t explain the pain – I’ve never felt anything like it before or since – it was like a dagger being pressed into the centre of my head and twisted.’

Russell added to the Loose Women star: ‘It was excruciating and for one moment I stood on my hotel balcony. I literally just thought: “f**k this, I’ve had enough.” And I felt like jumping.

‘And then the thought of the children entered my head and they were little girls then – they’re not going to manage without me. Back in the room. Went and lay on the bed, rinsed my face with cold water and took the pain on.’

Russell shares two daughters Becky, now 30 and Hannah, now 24, with ex-wife Helen Watson.

Russell, who was 39 at the time, decided to stay in Los Angeles and continue working on his album That’s Life until tests confirmed whether the tumour was malignant or benign. Not sure if he would survive, he believed the record could be the last thing he ever recorded.

He said: ‘And being the idiot that I am – I still to this day don’t know if it was the right or the wrong decision – but I didn’t tell my friends or my family and I went to the studio and I recorded the album.

‘I don’t remember making it. At that point I wasn’t sure whether I was going to live or die or what was going to happen to me, but I felt at that time this might be my legacy; it might be the last thing I recorded. I finished the album and I got on a plane and I flew home and I had my first operation.’

He underwent a five-hour emergency operation to remove the eight-centimetre tumour at St George’s Hospital in Tooting, South London. 

The opera singer, who has sold more than seven million albums worldwide during his career, underwent further surgery in 2007 after a re-growth of the tumour and bleeding into his brain.

He recovered, but says he is reminded every day of how close he came to death, because of the daily drugs required following the surgery.

‘Because of the damage that the tumour did, I’ll be taking a lifetime of replacement drugs and hormones for as long as I’m here, predominantly to my pituitary gland which was pretty much decimated, so there’s a constant reminder’, he told How To Be 60.

‘When people ask me about it, I don’t feel a sense of – I don’t want to talk about it, because that was years ago. It still feels like it’s now, because the after effects of it still exist.

‘I have to take daily injections and tablets, particularly hydrocortisone, which I was told if I didn’t take for a specific amount of time I wouldn’t be here anymore. It’s the lifesaving drug for me and growth hormones.

‘All these different things enhance my life and how I feel, but also, the flip side of that, they affect how I function and how I feel each day.’

Russell has openly spoken about his brain tumour battle over the years.

His 2024 book Encore: My journey back to centre stage, talks about his return to the limelight following the terrifying battle. 

In the years following his diagnosis, Russell battled crippling treatment, lifesaving operations, HRT therapy and mental health struggles – before being told he would likely never sing again.

He said: ‘My diagnosis changed everything – all I could think about was how my wife and daughters would survive without me. 

‘It was difficult to see beyond my illness at the time, but to be alive and healthy 15 years later is something I’m eternally grateful for. 

‘Often when we are writing wills we think about those closest to us. But a will, much like a piece of music, has the power to touch the lives of so many more. 

‘I want others to receive the kind of life-saving treatment that I did, to give that gift of time for which I’m so grateful every day.’

Meanwhile in 2018, Russell spoke candidly about his harrowing experience, admitting he has to take a ‘cocktail of drugs’ every day to keep himself alive.

The performer admitted he used to ‘panic he would die in his sleep’, after doctors discovered a tumour had returned on his pituitary gland back in 2007.

‘Initially it was a minefield, because I was taking this whole cocktail of drugs to stay alive,’ he told Best Magazine. 

‘It used to get me down, I would get very depressed. 

‘I’d go to bed at night but wouldn’t be able to get to sleep – I’d panic because I thought I would die if I fell asleep.’ 

The previous year, Russell told This Morning that while he was in the midst of conquering the second tumour, he believed he’d died.

He said: ‘When I came round after the second op, I remember my eyes flickering open and I saw two white shadows and thought, I did make it to heaven that’s nice. 

‘Then I realised it was the kids and there were tears streaming down my face.’ 

Manchester-born Russell, who started life as a factory bolt-cutter, found fame with his 2000 album The Voice. But two years later his personal life came crashing down with his divorce from his first wife, Helen.

Russell revealed to Kaye Adams, that for a while he wasn’t allowed to see the couple’s two daughters Becky and Hannah.

‘It was a very difficult time. The breakdown of my marriage was a testing time for me,’ he admitted. ‘There was a period of time where I wasn’t able to see my children and so I had to go to a court and get permission from a judge and that took a long time and it was hell.

‘When a court judge decided: “yes, you can actually see your children,” it was a fantastic moment.’

Russell, who lives on a farm in Cheshire with his second wife Louise, said he and his daughters Becky, 30 and Hannah, 24, are now closer than ever.

He said: ‘A lot of time was spent trying to conquer the world, but whilst it was happening, those first two years I think I rarely saw home.

‘Even though I had massive success, I was still looking at myself in the mirror and thinking: was this all worth it? Because I’d missed a lot of the important years with regards to my children.

‘I’ve definitely made up for it now, because even at 30 and 24 they’re so massively reliant on me. They’ve moved into the area that I live and our relationship is stronger and better than it’s ever been. I would give it all up for my kids.’

Russell is embarking on his Evolution Tour this autumn to celebrate 25 years of music. But he said that getting older had made him question his mortality.

He told Kaye Adams: ‘We do become more self-aware as we progress in age, of how much time we may potentially, hopefully, have left on the planet and it’s a sobering thought.

‘I know it sounds morbid, but I really don’t like the thought of everybody that I love and myself not being here anymore. It makes me really want to focus heavily on the things that I think are important in life and that’s friendship, love and family.

‘As I approach 60, I feel like it’s hitting me quite hard at the moment. I remember a few months back, I woke up in the middle of the night for no particular reason and I just thought: “oh my God, at some point I’m not going to exist anymore in this plane of life and neither is everybody else that I love and care for.” And it upsets me.’