WILKO Johnson was told he had terminal pancreatic cancer, with ten months to live, in late 2012. He promptly took to the road to play his farewell gigs in 2013.

"When I was diagnosed, a lot of interest in me was created but I didn't do it deliberately," says Wilko, finding gallows humour in that moment, as he reflects on his subsequent survival that finds the Canvey Island singer, guitarist, songwriter and Game Of Thrones actor playing York Barbican tomorrow.

Wilko defied his initial diagnosis after a second opinion and subsequent life-saving surgery and was declared cancer free in 2014. "Man, there’s nothing like being told you’re dying to make you feel alive,” he said.

His experience prompted the resurgent Johnson to write the memoir Don't You Leave Me Here, the story of his life in music with Dr Feelgood, the Solid Senders and The Blockheads, his life with cancer, and his life now, published last May by Little Brown.

Looking back to 2012 and the career resurrection that has followed, Wilko says: "Things had been building up, with Julien Temple making his documentary film about Dr Feelgood [Oil City Confidential] in 2009; then the cancer thing happened, and it led to things having to take a forward turn. The next thing I was doing was making an album with Roger Daltrey [Going Back Home], which we'd talked about doing before but never done, and I said we'd better do it quickly as I'd been diagnosed.

"So we booked a little studio in Sussex, where we were for eight days, making the record with no rehearsals, which was the best way to do it, as it was November, and I was supposed to have been dead by October."

Wilko recalls he was "going through a lot of strange feelings at the time". "Of course, when the album came out in March 2014, it took it up to another level, when I thought I'd just been bashing out some songs for my memorial," he says. "In fact it sold out its first run, so the record company [Universal Music] had to press more copies and it became the best-selling record in my life. That whole year and all the things that happened, I now look back at as being like a dream. It was a pretty good year!"

Yet what turmoil Wilko went through. "When I was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer with ten months to live, they said they couldn't cure me; all they could do was slow it down, so I didn't want any treatment," he says. "Then after I'd been on holiday in Japan, I came back to read in the papers that I had terminal cancer and had refused treatment, when we'd only put it on the website initially simply to explain that I'd cancelled a couple of gigs because of my diagnosis."

The second medical opinion and subsequent surgery, however, brought Wilko Johnson a new lease of life. "Certainly it's appreciated!" he says. "I just let things happen and I've had a pretty good time. These are the extra years, and this is what I like doing, playing gigs. That's what rock'n'roll is to me. The rest of the time I'm miserable! I can't do anything about it!

"But that year with cancer I was happier than in my normal state, as I was in a higher state: everything is different when you're thinking 'I'm going to die'."

Wilko set about penning his autobiography too. "I had to write the book fairly rapidly, and I'd never written a book before, so I didn't have any method, but I chose to write it without a co-author, so it's all in my voice," he says. "Since I've done it, I've inevitably thought of loads more stories, though I don't want to go through that all again!"

Nevertheless, in 2015, Wilko and Julien Temple teamed up again for The Ecstasy Of Wilko Johnson, a documentary that explored Johnson's cancer diagnosis and the unexpected reprieve that ensued.

Now, Wilko is marking the 30th anniversary of The Wilko Johnson Band, featuring drummer Dylan Howe and Blockheads bassist Norman Watt-Roy, with a tour and a new compilation double album in tow entitled I Keep It To Myself - The Best Of Wilko Johnson.

On Saturday, he returns to York for the first time since he played the DV8Fest at a sold-out Fibbers in July 2013, when even then his long goodbye had stretched beyond his own expectations, beyond even his Farewell Tour earlier that year. "I tell you what; I love York," he says. "I have many abiding memories of York, from visiting there and playing there."

That, however, is another story for another day, and plenty more to come, as Wilko looks ahead to turning 70 on July 12.

Wilko Johnson plays York Barbican on Saturday (April 22), 7.30pm. Tickets update: balcony seats still available at £28 on 0844 854 2757, at yorkbarbican.co.uk or in person from the Barbican box office.