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The Independent UK
The Independent UK
Lifestyle
Kate Ng

A Place in the Sun’s Jonnie Irwin joins wife at restaurant opening after terminal cancer diagnosis

Instagram/Jonnie Irwin

Jonnie Irwin has been seen celebrating a restaurant opening in Newcastle alongside his wife and friends as he continues to live with terminal cancer.

The A Place in the Sun host, 49, shared his stage four lung cancer diagnosis publicly in December and said he does not “know how long I have” to live.

But this month, Irwin appears to be feeling stronger as he made a return to a live show for A Place in the Sun in Manchester last Saturday (4 March).

On Thursday (9 March), he attended the opening of Gaucho restaurant in Newcastle, held by sporting greats Alan Shearer and Lee Westwood.

In a photograph published in the Daily Mail, Irwin is seen smiling as he poses with his wife Jessica Holmes and actor Jill Halfpenny.

Before his journey to Manchester over the weekend, the TV presenter said he was packing plenty of warm clothes for the cold weather this week.

“Cold weather calls for wool, wool and more wool,” he captioned an Instagram post that showed his clothes laid out on his bed, including a wool hat, socks, scarf and coat.

Irwin recently appeared on BBC Morning Live to share his advice for people who are unsure of what to do with their social media accounts after they die.

He has encouraged people to take control of their digital legacy while they are still alive and explored the concept of a “digital will”, as well as leaving video messages for loved ones to watch after you die.

(BBC)

“We’ve got to talk more about the end of our lives, online and in real life,” he said on the programme.

Revealing his diagnosis in Hello! magazine in December, Irwin said he realised something was wrong while filming A Place in the Sun in August 2020.

He was diagnosed with terminal cancer “within a week of flying back from filming” and said he was “given six months to live”.

“I had to go home and tell my wife, who was looking after our babies, that she was on her own pretty much,” he shared. “That was devastating. All I could do was apologise to her. I felt so responsible.”

Irwin and Holmes married in September 2016 and share three children, three-year-old son Rex and two-year-old twins Rafa and Cormac.

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