'It’s treatable, it’s not an issue': Hotelier John Brennan opens up about living with incurable cancer

He said he has been cocooned since last October after having a second course of scheduled chemo.

He said the first time he had chemo it was 2011.

“It was the 16 March, 2011 and I had my gallbladder out,” he told host Ryan Tubridy.

“The surgeon who took out the gallbladder…there was a little nugget on the side of it and he said they’d just take it because it was too big.”

John said the doctor sent it away to get analysed and they realised there was cancer in it.

“So then he phones me three weeks later and he says ‘listen, I’ve got some bad news for you blah blah blah’.

“He said ‘I’ve a great lady in Cork, Mary Cahill. Go and see Mary’.”

John said that after filming in Tipperary he went to Cork for his appointment “and Mary tells us [John and his wife Gwen] it’s stage four.

"I'm sitting looking at her thinking 4 out of 4, 4 out of 5, 4 out of 10, 4 out of 100. You don't want to ask because you really don't want to know the truth…”

John said that he was diagnosed with non Hodgkin's lymphoma.

He said the type of cancer was treatable but it’s not curable “but that’s fine. It’s treatable, it’s not an issue.”

When asked about his attitude to his diagnosis, John said “there’s professionals there to look after you” adding “you have to get on with it.”

He added: “We’re born with a disease called life. And no matter what happens us we’re all going to end at some stage.

“Some of us get toothaches and some of us get cancer. I got cancer and that’s just the way it is.

“There’s no point getting excited over it.”

He said: “I was only meant to get four to five years out of the first dose of chemo and I got eight and a half years.”

“So I’ve done very, very well. And even during the treatment, I've never had side effects.”