Python in hospital

Monty Python’s Terry Jones is fighting bowel cancer, according to press reports.

The 64-year-old will have surgery within days, and was last night at a private hospital in London

Doctors believe they have caught the cancer at an early stage, according to the Daily Mirror

His agent Jodi Shield said: ‘He is having a routine exploratory operation in the next few days. His surgeon is fairly confident - they think they've got it early enough.

‘He's in great spirits. We're having to make him stop working.’

Jones learned he had cancer a few days before last week's West End premiere of the Python musical Spamalot, but he still insisted on attending and posing for pictures alongside Michael Palin, Eric Idle and Terry Gilliam

Jones, a father of two, was being comforted in hospital buy his 22-year-old Swedish girlfriend Anna Soderstrom. He last year left his wife Alison after 35 years to be with her.

Bowel cancer claims 16,000 lives a year in Britain, and if detected early enough it is relatively easy to treat.

Fellow Python Graham Chapman died following a battle with throat cancer in 1989, aged 48.

Published: 21 Oct 2006