Almost lost his eyesight Ex-child star Heintje has been diagnosed with cancer

Bruno Bötschi

3.7.2024

Singer Hein Simons, better known as Heintje, has had a difficult time. As he explains in an interview, he has been diagnosed with black skin cancer.

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  • The Dutch pop singer Hein Simons, better known as Heintje, has been diagnosed with malignant melanoma.
  • If the disease had continued to develop, even his eyesight would have been at risk.
  • The 68-year-old Simons enjoyed great success at the end of the 1960s as a child star under the name Heintje.

At the end of the 1960s, the Dutchman Hein Simons sang his way into the hearts of music fans under the name Heintje with his bell-like voice. His greatest success was the song "Mama, you shouldn't cry for your boy".

But if the singer's mother, who died three years ago, had found out about the current diagnosis, she would have been very worried about her son.

In an interview with the German magazine "Freizeit Revue", 68-year-old Simons revealed that he was suffering from black skin cancer.

Hein Simons: "The cancer was malignant"

Simons says that he first noticed a wound on his nose that had not healed. His GP then immediately sent him to a dermatologist, who then diagnosed the cancer.

"It was malignant, they had to cut it out."

If the disease had developed further, his eyesight would even have been threatened: "Then the eye would have been gone. That can really scare you," said the musician in the interview.

He was lucky, however, as the skin cancer had not yet spread: After six months it was over, he says, and now everything just has to heal.

"That takes time. I now have to go to the doctor every few months at shorter intervals," explains Hein Simons. However, the singer plans to go on a Christmas tour again from December 2.

His career came to a standstill after his voice broke

After his voice broke, Heintje's career largely came to a standstill from 1971.

It was only in the 1990s that the singer returned to television music programs under his real name Hein Simons. Since then, he has made a name for himself as a pop singer.


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