Of eight Nolan brothers and sisters, two have died from cancer and three more have now been affected by it. A leading expert explains the biological quirk that could be the reason
Brian Nolan, big brother to the Nolan sisters, is the latest in the famous family to reveal he has cancer. The 69-year-old was told he had prostate cancer just three days after the funeral of his sister Linda, which he had courageously helped to plan despite his own ordeal.
The news is the latest ‘cancer curse’ for the singer siblings, who lost Bernie Nolan, 52, to breast cancer in 2013 before Linda, 65, died on January 15 this year. Anne, 74, was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2000 and Coleen, 60, learned she had skin cancer in 2023.
“I just want cancer to leave us alone,” said Brian, who went to his GP with urinary issues in November and following his diagnosis, will undergo surgery to remove his prostate gland. “The urologist stood up and said: ‘We’re going to treat this and we’re going to cure this’. I’m focusing on that and hope to god I can have the courage my sisters had.”
READ MORE: Coleen Nolan on the ‘shock’ of Linda’s death as she shares update on how family are doing
“I couldn’t speak,” said Loose Women star Coleen of being told her brother had cancer. “I went completely numb and about an hour later I wanted to punch walls and scream. In our family, cancer’s just there. But Brian was so positive and I’m just so proud of him.”
Brian kept his cancer fears secret for months as his sister Linda’s condition deteriorated, to protect his siblings from further anguish. The singer was first told she had the disease in 2005 and went into remission a year later. But in 2017, she devastatingly announced she had been diagnosed with a secondary cancer in her hip, which spread to her liver in 2020.
Three years later, the cancer had spread to her brain. The Daily Mirror Columnist passed away with her sisters at her side and her final moments were said to have been full of ‘love and comfort’.
Their father, Tommy Nolan Sr, was the first to be struck by the cruel disease, dying from cancer in 1998. Bernie, Anne, Linda and Coleen later faced diagnoses. “You almost feel like it’s a curse that’s been on you but it’s not. So many families go through this,” said Coleen in an emotional episode of Piers Morgan’s Life Stories in 2021.
In an exclusive interview as he awaits lifesaving surgery, Brian told how his family, with siblings Tommy, 77, Denise, 72, and Maureen, 70, making up the clan, have been referred to a genetic clinic for testing.
These days, much is known about the factors that can increase an individual’s risk, but why is it that the killer condition all too often targets entire families? Here, we take a look at the family’s history with cancer as an expert geneticist explains why some families might see similar cases of cancer among members, even if they test negative for well-known genetic defaults such as the BRCA1 and BRCA2 faulty genes, known as the ‘Jolie Gene.’
According to Cancer Research UK, most families will have at least one person who has or has had cancer. But having a couple of relatives diagnosed with cancer doesn’t mean there is a cancer gene fault running in the family. In families with an inherited faulty gene, there is usually a pattern of specific types of cancer. The strength of your family history depends on: who in your family has had cancer; the types of cancer they have had; how old they were at diagnosis; how closely related the relatives with cancer are to each other.
The more relatives who have had the same or related types of cancer, and the younger they were at diagnosis, the stronger someone’s family history is, with it being more likely that the cancers are being caused by an inherited faulty gene. In the case of the Nolan family, who rose to fame after forming the girl group The Nolans in 1974, they have experienced similar cancers. Anne was the first sister to be diagnosed with breast cancer in 2000.
The star was then diagnosed with stage three breast cancer 20 years later in April 2020 and is now in remission after receiving the all-clear. Just days after her second diagnosis, her younger sister Linda found out about her liver cancer – a cancer that their father died from.
This came after Linda was first diagnosed with breast cancer in 2005. While she underwent gruelling treatment, her beloved husband Brian Hudson died from skin cancer aged just 60. Brian had worked as the Nolans’ tour manager until 1983 and became his wife’s manager after she left the group.
Having lost her husband of 26 years, Linda was left in a deep depression while living with breast cancer but was given the all-clear in 2006. But the disease devastatingly returned as incurable secondary breast cancer in her hip in 2017. It was in 2020 that she was found to be suffering from liver cancer. Then, doctors found two sizable tumours surrounded by smaller ones in her brain in 2023.
Meanwhile, their late sister Bernie announced she had been diagnosed with breast cancer in April 2010. In October of the same year, Bernie was declared cancer-free following a mastectomy, chemotherapy and treatment with Herceptin. She announced in February 2012 that she was no longer taking cancer treatment drugs.
However, by the end of October 2012, Bernie’s cancer had returned. Doctors told the singer that the disease returned to her left breast, brain, lungs, liver and bones. The star passed at her home in Surrey in July 2013 aged just 52.
In 2023 it was revealed that Loose Women presenter Coleen, 58, had been diagnosed with basal cell carcinoma on her shoulder and melanoma on her face. Speaking with the Mirror in 2020, Linda confirmed that she, Anne, and Bernie tested negative for the BRCA gene mutation.
“Anne had breast cancer first in 2000, then me in 2006, then Bernie in 2010. Then we tested for the BRCA gene mutation and we don’t have it, but they did say we’ll have a rogue gene somewhere – it’s just one they haven’t found out about yet. They took our blood so they could use it for testing.
“It’s weird because the doctor said it’s not just bad luck that three sisters have got breast cancer. There’s something not right there, so for the other girls it’s very scary. They’re doubly aware of checking themselves because they could have this gene that we don’t know about.”
Speaking to The Mirror, consultant clinical geneticist at The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust, Dr Terri McVeigh, explained how families can inherit an alteration in genes that increases their risk of cancer, although some faults are too tricky to test with the current technology.
“Genes are tiny chunks of the DNA genetic code that we inherit from each of our parents. They are tiny structures inside our cells, that carry instructions to make proteins that carry out different jobs in the body,” Dr McVeigh explains. “We normally have two copies of most genes, one of which we inherit from our mother and the other which we inherit from our father. We have about 20,000 different genes. Some of these genes work to protect against the development of cancer – called tumour suppressors.
“Certain individuals are born with an inherited risk of cancer, because of an inherited alteration (also known as a variant or mutation) in one of these genes. In people where one copy of the gene is already broken, a cell only has to lose the one remaining copy for cells to start growing unrestrained and for cancer to develop. People from certain ethnic backgrounds may also be at higher cancer risk because some groups have had more genetic changes concentrated in their population over the generations.
“Genetic testing is useful in such families as it can help us identify those relatives at higher risk of developing cancer, and, importantly, allow us to take actions to try to facilitate early detection, or prevention where possible. Very often, even if we suspect a hereditary cause of cancer, genetic testing doesn’t identify a genetic alteration.
“A result like this cannot fully exclude the possibility that there may still be inherited risk factors in a family – there may be alterations in genes we don’t routinely test yet, or there may be tricky parts of the gene that cannot be easily tested by current technology.” Dr McVeigh also highlighted how non-genetic risk factors can come into play, such as shared environmental exposures. In cases where a genetic alteration isn’t identified, doctors may recommend extra screening depending on the family history.
At the Royal Marsden, a screening programme has begun to detect so-called germline cancer predisposition genes in high-risk populations before a cancer develops, so that patients with a mutated gene can be followed to make sure a tumour is detected early.
The NHS England Genomic Medicine service also offers genetic testing of patients who have already developed cancer. The expert adds: “Cancer genetics is a really rapidly moving area of medicine, and there may be an opportunity for additional genetic testing in the future as our knowledge grows.”
Cancer Research UK warns that you may have a strong family history if some of the following situations apply to you: cancers developed when the family members were young, multiple close relatives on the same side of your family have had cancer, the relatives have had the same type of cancer, or different cancers that can be caused by the same gene fault, one of your relatives has had a gene fault found by genetic tests.
Nicola Smith, senior health information manager at Cancer Research UK, said: “Only roughly 5-10 per cent of cancer diagnoses are linked to an inherited faulty gene from a parent.
“Faulty genes aren’t always passed on to children, but even when they are it doesn’t mean that a person will definitely get cancer – they just have a higher risk of developing particular types of cancer than other people. It’s a much less common cause of cancer than ageing or other factors, such as smoking.
“However, if people are concerned that they have a strong family history of cancer – for example, if multiple relatives have had the same type of cancer at a young age – then they can talk to their GP. If the doctor thinks that someone might be at increased risk, they can refer them to a genetics clinic.”
Whatever people living with cancer need to ask about cancer, work, money or life. The big things and the small stuff. Macmillan is at the end of the phone and online to provide support. Call the Macmillan Support Line on 0808 808 00 00 or visit macmillan.org.uk and ask anything.
