Elton John admits he 'doesn't know much time he has left' in candid TV documentary

The 77-year-old pop icon has spoken candidly about his life and what the future may hold as he gets older in a new show which follows him as he signed off his final ever tour.

Sir Elton John has admitted he doesn't know how much time he has left as he opens up on his death fears. The 77-year-old pop icon has spoken candidly about his life and what the future may hold as he gets older in a new TV documentary.

The show follows the singing legend as he signs off his final ever tour on the road. In one scene, Sir Elton can be spotted sitting in a dressing room, surveying his possessions surrounding him as he ponders his own mortality.

He says poignantly: “I wonder what is going to happen to all of this stuff when I finish? This is the latter time of my life. I don’t know how much time I have left. You think about life and, er, and death. You think, ‘Well, I just want to be where I want to be now.'”

The Rocketman singer has battled a string of health problems over the years and had knee and hip replacements as well as surgery for prostate cancer, The Mirror reports.

He chats in the dressing room of Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles, 47 years after he first played there in front of 110,000 fans. Sir Elton’s Farewell Yellow Brick Road tour concluded in Stockholm in July last year after 330 concerts worldwide.

He added: “I don’t have to work after this. I will work and do records and putting radio shows together but travelling takes so much out of you. It is very tiring. I am used to it. I am a veteran at it but this is where you start to think about mortality.”

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The documentary, Elton John: Never Too Late, was seen for the first time by fans at BFI London Film Festival, on Thursday. Sir Elton has sons Zachary, 13, and Elijah, 11, with husband David Furnish. He told how the boys also think about his mortality.

Sir Elton added: “They worry as they know how old I am. Not so much David but me. They love their Daddy so they want me to be around forever. I want to be around forever. I want to see them have children, get married but I don’t think I am going to be around for that. Who knows? You never know. So that is why I want to make the best of my time while I am around. Our time together is so wonderful and so precious.”

At an earlier screening he had joked about his health. Sir Elton said: “I don’t have tonsils, adenoids or an appendix. I don’t have a prostate. I don’t have a right hip or a left knee or a right knee. In fact, the only thing left to me is my left hip. But I’m still here.”

After his knee replacements he was seen struggling to walk at the 32nd Aids Foundation Oscars viewing party, which he hosted in March. He had the hip replacement in 2021 after revealing he fell “awkwardly on a hard surface”. In the summer, Sir Elton told how he suffered a nasty eye infection.

He said: “It has unfortunately left me with only limited vision in one eye. I am healing, but it’s an extremely slow process and it will take some time before sight returns to the impacted eye.”

In 2019, Sir Elton said he had been “24 hours from death” after contracting an infection following his prostate cancer treatment. Sir Elton penned in his memoir how he "couldn't stop shaking" on a plane home from a tour in South Africa. The legendary musician said he felt “worse than I ever had in my life” by the time he was checked into King Edward VII’s private hospital back home in London.

Sir Elton added: “Given some of the hangovers I’d had in the ’70s and ’80s, that was saying ­something… I was told that my condition was so serious, the hospital didn’t have the ­equipment to cope with it.”

After being moved to a different hospital, he spent the next two days in intensive care. Sir Elton said: “In the hospital, alone at the dead of night, I’d prayed, ‘Please don’t let me die, please let me see my kids again, please give me a little longer.’”

In the new documentary, the Pinner-born star also spoke about the physical abuse he suffered as a child at the hands of his parents. He says: “They were violent, they were physically violent. I used to walk on eggshells in case I did anything wrong. My mother when I was a year old she beat me 'til I bled with a wire brush to make me potty trained… my whole childhood was full of fear.”

Sir Elton’s father Stanley Dwight never watched him perform. The singer, who played at ­Glastonbury last year, said: “He never saw me live. It is sad. I wish it had been much different. God I wish it had been different.”

Sir Elton won a Legacy gong at the Virgin Atlantic Attitude Awards in London this week. He later posed with Ed Sheeran.

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