SOUTH Essex music legend Wilko Johnson was back playing in a Southend pub yesterday – for the closing sequence of a film about the way he beat cancer.

The Railway Hotel in Clifftown Road – a popular haunt of the former Dr Feelgood guitarist – was the venue of choice when director Julien Temple wanted film Wilko in action.

Temple, director of acclaimed Dr Feelgood documentary Oil City Confidential has been making a film about Wilko’s life since he was misdiagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer in 2012.

The film shows the star’s turmoil as he was given fresh hope last year by surgeon and fan Charlie Chan, who suspected the original diagnosis waswrong.

It also follows Wilko as he prepares to undergo the lengthy operation which removed a huge tumour and saved his life.

Speaking yesterday at the Railway, Wilko said he was in high spirits after struggling back to health.

He added: “It’s taken quite a time. I came out of hospital in summer and I had been in there for some weeks with the op.

“I went back home and I was so weak. I was really thin and every evening I was trying to walk around the block for exercise.

“I thought ‘how could I ever recover from this?’ because I was so thin, but I’m almost 100 per cent back now.”

Wilko underwent radical surgery performed by surgeon Emmanuel Hugue at Addenbrooke’s Hospital, Cambridge, to remove his pancreas, spleen, part of his stomach and small and large intestine.

After the big op, he was also treated for life-threatening tumours on his lung and liver.

Wilkowas well enough to record two songs with his band, broadcast on Jools Holland’s Hootenany TV show on New Year’s Eve,, but he has to yet to tackle a full live gig, Now he is back on form, he said he wanted his first major gig to be one which gave something back to the hospital which savedhis life.

He explained: “The next thing I’m going to do, which will be the first gig I’ve played since I went into hospital, will be a playing at the Junction, in Cambridge, in a benefit for Addenbrooke’s Hospital.

“To be able to do that in Cambridge, tohelp raise quite a lot of money for the hospital on March 6, that’s what I want to do.”

The guitarist admitted he was still getting used to walking and breathing.

He added: “Sometimes it hits me – I’m not supposed to be here”

! Julien Temple’s film about Wilko will get its first screening at the South By Southwest music industry convention in Austin, Texas, inMarch.