Emmerdale actor Liam Fox has opened up about his eight-year fight to get cancer treatment.

The star, who played Dan Spencer on the ITV soap between 2011 and 2023, recently had an operation to remove a basal cell carcinoma.

While he praised the NHS for their work in getting it removed, he told The Sun that it was frustrating trying to get an operation booked.

He said that he discovered something on his skin back in 2017, and that visits to the doctor resulted in an initial diagnosis of “just flakey skin”.

“Then about a year or so later it came back,” he said. “I went back to the doctors and they gave me the cream again which cleared it up. But they also got me into Warrington Hospital for some tests, to check it.

“They took a sample of the area and it came back negative, and I thought ‘okay?’ They said they wanted to check it again in six months. Six months later I never heard anything from the hospital, and the patch was still there, so I rang them again, I said ‘I need this sorting out as it’s starting to bleed again’ and they said, ‘well you’ll just have to wait in the queue like everyone else, we’re not concerned.'”

He then said that another year passed before the bleeding caused him to get in touch with the hospital again.

He explained: “I told them that I really needed to sort it out as it was still bleeding, the woman on the desk said, ‘Oh yeah, you should have been seen by now.’ I got a meeting at the hospital a couple of days later. The doctor that I saw admitted that I should have been seen much sooner…

“I rang again at the beginning of February (2024) and said ‘am I going to get this sorted? It’s ridiculous’ and they sorted an appointment the following week. I went in and had it taken out, but it’s just been ridiculous having to push down barriers just to get it sorted.”

He said that when it came to the surgery, he was in and out on the same day, stating: “The surgeon on the day at St Helen’s Hospital was brilliant. I can’t praise them enough.

“Once I got to the hospital to have it done everyone was fantastic.”

Adding that “everything is healing nicely”, the actor said: “It’s been frustrating but I am lucky. The one I’ve got is the most common skin cancer on the planet. I’ve always been pretty good at putting on suncream but maybe the damage was done when I was younger, we don’t know.”