A Life Filled with Joy and Music
James Valentine knew he was dying, but he also knew something else with equal clarity: he didn’t want to die angry. The radio presenter and jazz saxophonist who surrounded himself with music, laughter, and good times throughout his life believed that a “rage against the dying of the light” wasn’t for him. In his final interview with Australian Story in February, Valentine, 64, shared his thoughts on his journey:
“I don’t want my last days to be angry. Can’t my last days be happy? If these are my last months, I want them full of joy. I want them full of friendship and love and happiness. That’s what I’ve lived for. So, I don’t want that to stop.”
With this mindset, Valentine embraced his “living wake,” performing as a show-tune-playing sax player, raising and dipping his hat like a vaudeville star, and cajoling the crowd of family and friends to cheer him on. He played his saxophone at a gig with his son Roy soon after learning he had terminal cancer. He spent time on the couch with his wife, Joanne Corrigan, and daughter, Ruby, watching movies and enjoying their company.
Valentine returned to the ABC Sydney studios to record a final show, reminiscing with his beloved audience of more than 25 years about the laughs and stories they’d shared. There were moments of overwhelming despair, such as the day in June last year at Westmead Hospital when an oncologist used the words “stage four, terminal, inoperable, incurable” in one sentence, leaving him and Joanne reeling.
A Difficult Decision
About 18 months earlier, Valentine had been diagnosed with oesophageal cancer and faced a monumental choice between two vastly different treatment options. Neither guaranteed that cancer would not recur, perhaps elsewhere in his body. He chose the less invasive option. Now, the cancer had recurred as a distant metastasis in his omentum, a “fatty apron” that hangs down from the stomach.
Valentine said that “for a day or two” after his terminal diagnosis, he pondered the medical choice he’d made. “Then I just went: ‘There is nothing to be gained here.’ There is no insight that’s going to change anything. And I need to stop doing that.” He focused on life, keen to ensure that his children didn’t remember his final months as a dreadful time of despair.
A Career Built on Laughter
Valentine emerged as a showman in the 1980s Australian rock scene, playing saxophone for bands such as Jo Jo Zep and the Falcons and Models. His true wackiness took flight on Sydney radio. After touring the US with Models, performing the iconic sax solos on Barbados and Out of Mind, Out of Sight, Valentine felt jaded by the lifestyle and, having met Joanne, wanted a more stable job.
He tried television first, with gigs at the ABC and Channel 10, but was drawn to radio. There was history there: his mother Nina, now in her late nineties, had been a radio announcer in his home town of Ballarat, Victoria. The moment Valentine walked into a booth for his first radio shift, he felt at home. “My memory is that I just went: ‘Ah, yes, I love this. This is fantastic.'”
Valentine loved the immediacy of radio, the seat-of-your-pants improvisation, and, with his innate sense of rhythm, was adept at understanding the light and shade required to keep audiences engaged. For the first couple of years after starting on Afternoons at ABC Sydney in 1998, he kept largely to the formula of current affairs-style interviews. But as his confidence grew, along with his understanding of his listeners, Valentine decided, “You know what? I’m just going to go for the silly stuff that’s in my head.”
Sharing the Journey
Valentine’s long-time producer and friend, Jen Fleming, recalls when he announced in March 2024 that he wanted to share his cancer diagnosis on air and interview his then-surgeon, Douglas Fenton-Lee, “in his characteristic, quirky, whimsical way.” Valentine told his listeners about the Thai meal he ate in late 2023 that caused him to choke and retch and how he had difficulty swallowing. How he went for an endoscopy and awoke to learn he had a 4-centimetre tumour where the oesophagus meets the stomach.
He told them he’d been having chemotherapy and radiation to shrink the tumour before Dr Fenton-Lee operated, in keeping with standard protocols. The surgery would be long and risky. It would involve removal of the oesophagus and the stretching of his stomach to his throat. “I had this impression that for the rest of my life, I’d be eating like a seagull,” quipped Valentine later. “I’d basically just open the beak [and] someone would chuck in a chip.”
But beyond the jokes, there was great trepidation. Recovery would be arduous, with the risk of complications, and Valentine would have to learn to eat again. Playing the sax might not be possible.
Two Doctors, Two Treatments, an Impossible Choice
Joanne recalls sitting with Valentine in Bali, the phone on loudspeaker, listening to Dr Michael Bourke tell them he might have an option other than the full oesophagectomy. The director of gastrointestinal endoscopy at Westmead Hospital thought it was possible Valentine might be a candidate for a less interventionist procedure called endoscopic submucosal dissection (ESD), in which cancerous lesions are removed via an endoscopy.
With this procedure, the oesophagus would be retained. But first, Dr Bourke had to assess if Valentine was a candidate for ESD, which is only viable for early cancer, representing about 15 to 20 per cent of all oesophageal cancers. Valentine organised for Dr Fenton-Lee to send his medical reports to Dr Bourke, who reviewed the material with his team and carried out his own endoscopic checks.
“It was my view at that time he had an early-stage tumour that was suitable for endoscopic resection, although it had been treated by chemo radiotherapy,” Dr Bourke says. “There was no evidence of spread beyond the oesophagus at that point.”
Dr Fenton-Lee told Valentine he should feel free to explore the possibility “even though at the time I didn’t think that James was suitable for endoscopic resection.” He didn’t believe Valentine’s was an early cancer, due to the thickness and length of the tumour. There was an enlarged lymph node that was concerning but could not be determined by the reviewing radiologist as cancerous.
A Year of Living Gratefully
Nothing could overcome Ruby and Roy’s deep sadness after learning in June last year that their father’s cancer was back and he was terminal. But it’s helped them to know Valentine lived that last year with as much gusto as he could muster.
“He was ecstatic just to have his life back and a second chance,” Ruby said. “It was probably the happiest he’s been, maybe ever. It was almost like because things were taken away for a while, he did just run at everything again and kind of just embraced everything,” Roy says.
Valentine launched a mini-tour called the Upbeat Revue, combining his sax playing with a stand-up routine and filling the seats with fans. Before launching into a saxophone rendition of When You’re Smiling, he told his Sydney concert audience: “What I’m trying to do when I play this thing, or I’m on the radio, it’s all the same thing: I’m just trying to bring joy.”
Final Moments
Valentine had no regrets about his decisions. His brief return to Afternoons on Sydney radio gave him a lot of joy. And for Ruby and the family, it was wonderful to feel the outpouring of love for Valentine. “What’s been really amazing about sharing this whole process with all of Sydney is you find out about how much he means to so many other people,” Ruby says.
On his final day at the station in June last year, Valentine told Australian Story he always knew the cancer could recur, although he admitted to being surprised by the ferocity of its return. Dr Bourke believes it was likely the cells leading to the recurrence had potentially spread before any treatments were offered.
But Valentine had no regrets about the treatment decisions he had made. “I made the choice,” he said. He adopted the same attitude when it came to the way he wanted his life to end. He accessed voluntary assisted dying, which he considered “a very civilised process.” “Why wouldn’t you do that? It’s a fantastic thing to have available to cut out the suffering at the very end.”
On the Saturday before he died, James Valentine, the performer, the musician, the family man, the radio broadcaster, the much-loved friend to the people of Sydney, was made a member of the Order of Australia. A few days later, with his adoring family around him at home, he made them laugh one last time, then slipped away.
Watch the Australian Story with James Valentine, A Year of Living Gratefully, Monday at 8:00pm (AEDT) on ABCTV and
ABC iview
.
