Only Fools And Horses star Patrick Murray has revealed that he has had a cancerous tumour removed from his lung.

Murray, 65, who played the trilby-wearing wide-boy Mickey Pearce in the beloved TV sitcom, opened up about being diagnosed with cancer on Twitter and urged fans to go and get themselves checked out if they had any concerns about their own health.

In a series of tweets, he wrote: “The other day I saw a gov advert advising anyone who has been suffering from bloating, pain or discomfort in the abdominal region and constipation to ask their GP to refer them for an ultrasound exam. It’s quick totally painless and it can save your life. I now speak from my own experience.

“Naturally I wanted to keep my own health problems private, but failing to fully endorse this ad would be selfish. Thanks to my ultrascan I have a fighting chance. It showed my organs needed further investigation and tumours were spotted. This led to a PET scan which covers a much larger area.

“To my wonderful surprise these lesions were not cancerous but the scan did find an early-stage cancerous tumour in my lung. This has since been removed,” he continued.

“I am tweeting now, which wouldn’t be the case if I hadn’t had the ultrasound all those months ago.

“A lot of people put these symptoms down to age and the discomfort to simply having a weak stomach. Please don’t ignore it if it persists.

“As for me, and thanks to the NHS, I can now see the same beautiful horizon as you,” he concluded.

Murray appeared in 20 episodes of Only Fools and Horses alongside David Jason as Del Boy and Nicholas Lyndhurst as Rodney Trotter.

His character was known for his outlandish declarations about his success in both business and with women. Mickey also frequently took advantage of Rodney’s inexperience in the industry by stealing his money and his girlfriends.

After the show ended its 22-year run in 2003, Murray went on to land several big-screen roles including The Firm and Curse Of The Pink Panther, but eventually quit acting to become a taxi driver in Kent.

He was eventually forced to retire from work after battling Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, which causes breathing difficulties.

He married his wife Anong, 36, in Thailand in 2016, and they were drawn into a Visa row in 2017, when his spouse and daughter’s application to move to the UK was denied.

Speaking on ITV’s Loose Women at the time, he said: “I wanted to get her a visa but it was hard so I had to come back here.

“Being out of the industry for so long, the work dried up so I went back to driving an executive car, a Mercedes, to do it. I only saw my baby on the phone for two years, I was a Skype dad.”

The family were finally reunited after a lengthy battle with the Home Office in 2018.

News of Murray’s health scare comes just four months after his Only Fools And Horses co-star John Challis died “peacefully in his sleep” on September 19 following a long battle with cancer. He was 79.