John Farnham’s wife Jill reveals plea that led to devastating diagnosis

Jill Farnham, the famously private wife of Australian music legend John Farnham, has penned two chapters in his tell-all memoir The Voice Inside.

Known for steering clear of the spotlight, Jill’s more than 6000-word contribution offers a candid insight into a 51-year marriage filled with adventure, “mostly a whole lot of fun” and, as she puts it, “an interesting life”.

The wife of the famed chart-topper said that following his marathon 12-hour surgery to remove a cancerous tumour in late 2022, she’s not sure if her husband will ever sing again.

“I don’t know if John will sing again,” she wrote. “It just depends. Because of the radiation, that whole side of his face is rock hard. The flesh, the muscle, the tendons, none of it is supple.

“The surgeons need to work out how to loosen it all, so we have to be patient. He’s disappointed, naturally, because he may not be up on a stage again and he loved that.”

Jill also revealed it was her who pushed Farnham to see a doctor before his diagnosis with oral cancer in August 2022.

“He had a big white mass on the inside of his cheek and you could physically see it,” Jill wrote in the memoir. “For several months I was saying to him, ‘Let’s go see about that thing in your mouth,’ and he’d say, ‘No, it’s alright, it’s alright, it’s alright.’ He kept putting it off and putting it off. I pleaded with him to go see a doctor and finally he did.”

Jill noted her husband “is a classic Cancerian” when it comes to making big decisions and that her own natural inclination to not waste any time — and the fear of losing him — allowed the Farnham family to tackle the tumour removal and the ensuing recovery quickly.

“Over the years I’ve had to be strong,” Jill wrote. “I’ve had to be a wife, a mother, a psychiatrist, a doctor, I’ve had to be all those things in one. I’ve had to be strong and bossy to keep the family together, to keep moving forward, and I have done that because I love John and I love my family.

“John is a classic Cancerian, he likes to walk sideways and go around everything, rather than face any issues head-on,” Jill continued. “To this day he acts like that when he’s faced with a tough decision or situation. He always beats around the bush rather than deal with it and then, of course, that just makes a situation worse for him.”

Later in the chapter detailing Farnham’s health, Jill set the record straight on some media reports relating to the surgery to remove the cancerous tumour.

“And, just for the record, they didn’t take his jaw,” she wrote. “I know lots of people think that’s what happened, but in the end they removed the cancer from his cheek and they also scraped his jaw to make sure it hadn’t gotten into his bones.

“Thankfully the cancer wasn’t in his bones, which was great news, and so he’s still got his bottom jaw, even though the radiation has messed that up a little bit.

“In hospital they were feeding him through a tube in his stomach, which was pretty grim. I started taking in my home cooking. Things I knew John would like. He would eat a couple of mouthfuls and that would be it, he wouldn’t be able to manage any more. For a while there, it felt like one thing on top of another for John.

“It was a traumatic time for all of us, but we got through it. Now he’s back to eating, which is a good sign, but he can’t open his mouth very far, so it’s hard.”

Jill met John Farnham in the early 1970s while they were both working on the musical Charlie Girl. Known as Jillian Billman at the time, she was a dancer in the production. Shortly after the musical’s run in 1973, the pair married at St Matthew’s Church of England in Glenroy, Melbourne.

Jill revealed that as soon as fans found out she was dating Farnham, she “became a target”.

“Mum and Dad would get prank phone calls and one day a girl knocked on our front door,” Jill wrote in The Voice Inside. “Luckily it was the weekend and Dad was home, because when he opened the door she was standing there with a knife.

“Another time I was walking into the theatre and there were about 10 of John’s young fans in the foyer. They saw me and started bullying me about John. After a few minutes I’d had enough and I said to them, ‘Yeah, we are dating.’ They were so stunned that I’d admitted it they left me alone.

“Over the years a small number of John’s fans have given me a hard time, because they always thought they’d be the one to marry him. But 99.9999 per cent of them are really cool.”

Farnham’s memoir, The Voice Inside, came out yesterday.