Phil Collins has given a major health update and revealed he has a 24-hour live-in nurse.

The 74-year-old hitmaker has been blighted by health woes in recent years and revealed last summer that he was in hospital. But as he gears up to celebrate his 75th birthday at the end of this month, Phil has insisted there is “life in the old dog yet”.

However, his life is very different now after five knee-surgeries and kidneys packing up. The ‘In The Air Tonight’ hitmaker spoke in a BBC Two interview with Zoe Ball for Eras.

The pair discussed his long career, from being in Genesis to going solo, as well as his many health issues, including his well-documented battle with type 2 diabetes and complications from spinal surgery. “Yeah, it’s an ongoing thing. You know I have a 24-hour live-in nurse to make sure I take my medication as I should do.  

“I’ve had challenges with my knee, I had everything that could go wrong with me, did go wrong with me.

“I got COVID in hospital – my kidneys started to back up, you know, everything that started that could, all seemed to converge at the same time.

“I had five operations on my knee now – I’ve got a knee that works, and I can walk, albeit with assistance, you know, crutches or whatever.”

Phil’s music career started in 1970 when he became the drummer for Genesis.

While remaining with the band, he also had a solo career in the 1980s which included hits such as Against All Odds and Two Hearts.

But with the fame and touring the world, came a downside, as he said: “I’d probably been drinking too much, and so my kidneys were messed up, you know.

“I enjoyed coming off tour, coming off the road, but I thought, right, I’m gonna do all those things that I couldn’t do.

“I wasn’t one of those guys that sort of stayed up all night drinking, I’d drink during the day, but I guess I had too much of it. I was never drunk, although I fell over a couple of times.

“It is just one of those things that happened and it all caught up with me and I spent months in hospital.”

Now Phil – who has five children including actress daughter Lily – is feeling positive about the future.

He said: “The things that are ahead for me would be, apart from just being back to being totally mobile and healthy, is go in there and have a fiddle about and see if there’s more music ’cause you know, you tend to sort of feel, that’s it, I’ve done that. 

“But you’ve gotta start doing it to see if you can do it. Otherwise, you don’t do it. So that is something on my horizon.”