Former Atomic Kitten singer Natasha Hamilton, who has just revealed she was diagnosed with skin cancer last year, admitted that she initially dismissed the disease as a mosquito bite.
The 42-year-old pop star, who gave birth to her fifth child in August 2023, said that she first noticed an itch on her back while she was on holiday in Majorca, Spain.
Speaking on Good Morning Britain on Friday (6 June), Hamilton said: “I’d been on holiday, and I wasn’t actually in the sun a lot because my baby was only about five months old and I was breastfeeding.
“One afternoon, I had her on my lap and my back was in the sun, and it got burnt. I don’t know whether it was later that day or the next day, I had an itchy spot on my back.
“I just thought it was a mosquito bite, didn’t think anything of it, I felt it and went, ‘Oh, mosquito bite!’ It wasn’t until maybe four weeks later when I was at home and it was itching, and I was like, ‘Hang on a minute, that seems a bit long for a mosquito bite.’”
After asking her husband to take a photo of the part of her skin that was irritating her she soon realised that it wasn’t a mosquito bite.
“When I looked at it I went, OK, I think I know what that is,” she said. “Originally, it had just been a dark freckle that I’ve had on my back for many years. It wasn’t raised, it wasn’t a mole, it was just a freckle.”
Although she is now cancer-free Hamilton admitted that the moment did cause her to reflect. “‘It was found, it was cut away and, yeah, we move on. But it was kind of a ‘Oh, I’m not invincible’ moment,” she added. “These things do happen to you sometimes, and you’ve just got to look after yourself.”
Hamilton went on to say she was later diagnosed with a “basal-cell carcinoma”, and added that she thought her use of sunbeds during her early days in the girl group in the late 1990s and early 2000s could have contributed.
She added: “People of my age will probably feel the same, or remember, if you were going on a night out you used a sunbed because you wanted that sunkissed look to make yourself feel good and give you a bit of confidence.”
Hamilton said she would also get sunbeds ahead of going on Top Of The Pops and other big TV shows.
“There was a sunbed shop based in the hotel that we stayed in all the time in London, and I’d use tan accelerators, and I can honestly say I don’t think there was ever a time when I went on a sunbed that I didn’t burn.
“Looking back now, because I’m type one skin anyway, I’m not supposed to be in such intense sun.”
Hamilton’s mother Maria was diagnosed with the same type of cancer after Hamilton noticed a mark on her face and urged her to get it checked.
She said her mother was initially told by doctors that the patch of skin was “nothing”, before she urged her to ask to be referred to a dermatologist a year later, who told her it was skin cancer “straight away”, before arranging for her to have them removed.
Speaking in 2022, Hamilton said she had changed her lifestyle to lower the risk of skin cancer following her mother’s diagnosis.
As part of Atomic Kitten alongside Kerry Katona and Liz McClarnon, before Katona was later replaced by Jenny Frost, Hamilton scored 13 UK top 10 singles and four UK top 10 albums – they are best known for the songs “Whole Again” and “Eternal Flame”.
Additional reporting by PA.
#Atomic #Kittens #Natasha #Hamilton #dismissed #skin #cancer #mosquito #bite
