The hairdresser has worked with a whole host of stars including Paul McCartney, Lorraine Kelly and even the Queen
A This Morning regular Trevor Sorbie has ‘weeks to live’ after he turned down chemotherapy treatment which ‘might have given him another month’ he has said.
The ‘hairdresser to the stars’, 76, last month said he has terminal bowel cancer, which has now spread to his liver. Speaking to the Times, he said: “Chemo might give me another month but I can’t face any more of that poison. When I asked a nurse if I’d still be here at Christmas, she said, ‘We don’t know, Trevor’. And that annoyed me. I’ve got cancer in my body, but not in here. My brain is my engine and I’ll go when I’m ready.”
Trevor, who has styled the likes of the Queen and Helen Mirren, also revealed that he hadn’t slept in three days due to steroids causing “mad insomnia”. His illustrious career includes styling Adam Ant, Bryan Ferry, George Harrison, Paul McCartney, the Beach Boys, Kylie Minogue, Grace Jones, Robbie Williams, and Lorraine Kelly.
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Trevor first spoke about his diagnosis after experiencing severe bleeding which led him to seek medical help. He recalled: “I lost a lot of blood one night and was unusually disturbed so went to hospital. They told me I had bowel cancer and I had a little panic attack. I looked at Carole [his wife] and she looked at me, we were both speechless, didn’t know what to say. So I went and had a big gin and tonic.”
In 2009, he left salon work to concentrate on his charity, My New Hair, which he established after cutting a wig for his sister-in-law, Jackie, who was undergoing chemotherapy for bone cancer. He has trained thousands of hairdressers not only in wig cutting, but also in communicating with people nearing the end of their lives, reports the Mirror.
Trevor paid homage to his wife Carole, describing her as “Florence Nightingale and Mother Teresa rolled into one”. It was Carole who called an ambulance one night in 2019 when he started bleeding heavily.
He said he hadn’t experienced symptoms before, apart from diarrhoea and constipation he had been having for a few months, which he had ignored. Surgery removed a tumour from his bowel – and he was told there was a five per cent chance of it returning, which sadly it did.
Speaking about his hopes, he said: “I want to live every day enjoying what I’ve got and making the most of it.” Sorbie plans to die at home, though not quite yet, and does not want a funeral. He added: “Too upsetting. When the time comes my ashes will be interred with Carole’s and our little dog. But I’m going to defy medical science. If the cancer reaches my brain, then I’ll accept it, but until then, I’m in charge, and I’m going on my terms.
Appearing on This Morning last month, he shared a poignant moment with viewers: “I had a nurse come round the other day to assess me and as I asked ‘Will I make Christmas?’ She said ‘I don’t know Trevor’. I said ‘I damn well will. The brain rules the body. The heart plays a big part as well but that is the engine. Because I’ve got a charity I’ve helped many women through cancer, cutting wigs for them. People handle it in different ways.”
The NHS says on Bowel Cancer Symptoms:
- Most people who are eventually diagnosed with bowel cancer have one of the following combinations of symptoms:
- a persistent change in bowel habit that causes them to go to the toilet more often and pass looser stools, usually together with blood on or in their stools
- a persistent change in bowel habit without blood in their stools, but with abdominal pain
- blood in the stools without other haemorrhoid symptoms, such as soreness, discomfort, pain, itching or a lump hanging down outside the back passage
- abdominal pain, discomfort or bloating always provoked by eating, sometimes resulting in a reduction in the amount of food eaten and weight loss
