Chris Rea gave his beloved wife Joan an incredible gift after his battle with cancer years ago, which brought the childhood sweethearts even closer together.

The hitmaker passed away on Monday at the age of 74 after a short illness, with his wife and their daughters Josie and Julia paying tribute to the ‘beloved’ star.

In his final TV interview on BBC’s Mortimer and Whitehouse Gone Fishing in 2020, Chris opened up about his health battles and revealed that he’d gifted Joan the rights to his all his songs including festive hit Driving Home For Christmas.

Middlesbrough-born Chris, who met Joan when he was just 16, had been dogged with serious health issues including peritonitis, pancreatic cancer and diabetes. In 2017, it was revealed he needed to inject insulin seven times a day.

Host Bob Mortimer spoke of his own illnesses and said: ‘The journey of recovery made me incredibly close to my wife,’.

Chris agreed saying: ‘It was exactly the same for me. I was in hospital and the pancreatic cancer nurse comes in and tells me ‘it’s not grade three cancer phone your wife!’.

Chris Rea gave his beloved wife Joan an incredible gift after his battle with cancer, which brought the childhood sweethearts even closer together (pictured together 2016)

In his final TV interview in 2020, he opened up about his health battles and revealed that he’d gifted Joan the rights to his all his songs including festive hit Driving Home For Christmas

‘So I phone my wife and she pulled the car over and burst into tears’.

Before laughing: ‘I gave her all the money, all the rights to all the songs, and now she won’t give them back,’.

The royalties from the iconic Christmas makes an estimated £210K a year and helped Chris amass a fortune in supercars and property since its 1986 release.

It has been used in adverts, including this year’s M&S offering featuring Dawn French, and has made a reappearance on the UK Singles Chart every year since 2007, including making number 10 in 2021.

It certainly was not a one-hit wonder due to songs such as Road to Hell helping Chris to sell 30 million records. But the much-loved Christmas hit alone made the Middlesbrough rocker more than £7million of his £15million fortune over the past 39 years.

Elsewhere in his final interview, Chris revealed that he was actually banned from the road when writing Driving Home For Christmas.

‘I was on the dole when I wrote that, my manager had just left me, I’d just been banned from driving,’

‘My now wife Joan had to drive down to London and pick me up in the mini and take me home and that’s when I wrote it’.

He laughed: ‘I gave her all the money, all the rights to all the songs, and now she won’t give them back’ (pictured 2013)

The royalties from the iconic Christmas makes an estimated £210K a year and helped Chris amass a fortune in supercars and property since its 1986 release (pictured 2005)

The clip was shared to Chris’ official Instagram account just days before his death, with the caption: ‘Chris Rea tells Bob Mortimer how he wrote Driving Home for Christmas’.

The singer’s final Instagram post featured a car on a snowy motorway with a road sign reading: ‘Driving home for Christmas with a thousand memories’.

In the post, shared on Sunday, he added a caption reading: ‘Top to toe in tailbacks If it’s a white Christmas, let’s hope the journey’s a smooth one.’

Announcing his passing, his family said in a statement: ‘It is with immense sadness that we announce the death of our beloved Chris.

‘He passed away peacefully in hospital earlier today following a short illness, surrounded by his family.’

Tributes swiftly flooded in for the star on Twitter, with many referencing his music, his love of cars and the cruel irony of his passing being so close to Christmas.

The singer’s final Instagram post featured a car on a snowy motorway with a road sign reading: ‘Driving home for Christmas with a thousand memories’

Chris suffered a major health scare during his career when he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer at the age of 33.

He had part of his pancreas removed along with his gall bladder and part of his liver, but went on to make a recovery and lived with diabetes as well as kidney problems.

He also suffered a stroke in 2016 but he recovered and went on to release two more albums Road Songs For Lovers in 2017 and One Fine Day in 2019.

Chris previously revealed: ‘I’ve had nine major operations in ten years. A lot of it is to do with something called retroperitoneal fibrosis, where the internal tissues attack each other. No one knew it existed 20 years ago, and it’s completely unpredictable.

‘It’s affected the colon, the pancreas, the gall bladder, the liver – and then I get a stroke.’

Speaking of his successes and impact on his health, he said: ‘I made a lot of money, but you can dangerously let it lead you on…

‘It depends what company you keep. I once said to Michael Winner, ‘I’m the poorest man on this Barbados beach.’ On days like today, the richest man in the world is the one who hasn’t got a bad shoulder.’

Chris suffered a major health scare during his career when he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer at the age of 33

Tributes swiftly flooded in for the star on Twitter, with many referencing his music, his love of cars and the cruel irony of his passing being so close to Christmas

Chris previously shed light on writing the iconic tune, as he previously told Bob Mortimer: ‘I was on the dole when I wrote [Driving Home For Christmas]. My manager had just left me. I’d just been banned from driving.

‘My now wife, Joan, had to drive down to London to pick me up in the Mini and take me home, and that’s when I wrote it.’

Chris was born in Middlesbrough and didn’t start making music until he was in his 20s when he learned to play the guitar and joined several local bands before landing a solo record deal with Magnet Records.

He released his first album Whatever Happened to Benny Santini? in 1978 and scored a US hit with the single Fool (If You Think It’s Over) and earned himself a Grammy Award nomination for best new artist.

The star continued to record albums but didn’t score a big hit in his native UK until he released Dancing with Strangers in 1987 while 1989’s The Road to Hell featured his two-part track of the same name which became one of his most famous tunes.

His other best known song is the festive track Driving Home For Christmas which was originally released as a B-side to the single Hello Friend in 1986. He re-recorded the tracl in 1988 and it featured on his 1988 album New Light Through Old Windows.

According to the BBC, he previously admitted he didn’t want to release the track but his record company forced him to.

He said: ‘I didn’t need a Christmas song hanging around at that point. I did everything I could to get them not to release that record. Thankfully they did!’