Ronnie Wood has told Mail on Sunday's Event Magazine, that he didn't have chemo to treat his lung cancer as he didn't want to lose his hair.

He recently endured a five hour operation to remove part of his lung after the lesion was discovered in May during a routine medical check-up.

Explaining how he found out, he said:

"And then he came back with the news that I had this supernova burning away on my left lung. And, to be totally honest, I wasn’t surprised. I knew I hadn’t had a chest X-ray since I went into Cottonwood [a rehab clinic in Tucson, Arizona] in 2002. He asked me what I wanted to do and my answer was simple: “Just get it out of me.” 

‘But then there was a week of tests. They needed to know if it had set up encampments and spread to my lymph nodes. If that had happened it would have been all over for me. 

‘So there was this one week when I didn’t know what was happening. Sally [Humphreys, his wife of five years] was amazing. It’s only since we’ve got through it that she has been able to tell me how it was the worst seven days of her life. 

‘I was prepared for bad news but I also had faith it would be OK. Apart from the doctors, we didn’t tell anyone because we didn’t want to put anyone else though the hell we were going through. But I made up my mind that if it had spread I wasn’t going to go through chemo, I wasn’t going to use that bayonet in my body.’ 

The 70-year-old quit smoking before his twins were born in 2016 but had been a heavy smoker for the 50 years beforehand as well as an alcoholic. 

The Rolling Stones commence their 'No Filter' European tour on September 9 and Wood is expected to join them.