Telly comic Sean, who died last month from lung cancer at the age of 58, had frequently credited a date called Tina for spotting a mark on his back which turned out to be a malignant melanoma.
And today Terina Mallows, 55, known as Tina, tells how she noticed the misshapen mole as Sean cooked her breakfast at his North London flat almost 30 years ago.
The pair enjoyed three dates in the early 1990s after meeting at one of Sean’s early gigs.
She said: “It was a very long time ago and we weren’t love’s young dream. But he was such a nice man.
“In the morning he offered to cook me bacon and eggs. He had his top off and his back facing me – the mark was quite obvious.
“I jabbed him where the spot was and in jest said, ‘You’ve got skin cancer!’
“He freaked out and said, ‘What? Really? Where?’ I was probably still a bit drunk from the night before. I said, ‘Where I’ve just prodded you’, and I suggested he get it checked out.”
Sean went to see a doctor that same week – but the pair had parted ways before Tina learned that she had saved his life.
He revealed in a 2010 interview: “I was with a girl called Tina one night and if I hadn’t been, well, I’d be dead now.
“She said there was something weird on my back. It didn’t hurt or itch and being in the small of my back it wasn’t something you could easily see.”
Tina, from Walton-on-Thames, Surrey, said she did not know he really did have skin cancer until years later.
She said: “What happened took place all those years ago, yet he told the world that I saved him. It’s just so nice.”
When they first met, she and Sean had felt “too awkward” to speak. But he put a lollipop with his phone number in her pocket before she left.
The aspiring author and soft furnishing manufacturer said she was shocked by his death.
The comic, who later married and had three children, had told only family and close friends about his illness.
Tina said: “It’s strange to think he’s gone. He was a perfect gentleman. I’ve no doubt Sean made a wonderful father and husband.
“I’d like to offer my deepest sympathy to his wife and children."
