Barry Sheene's latest challenge

During his career as a 500cc motorcycle racer Barry Sheene, 51, cheated death several times. Many of his bones are now held together with metal pins and plates; the legacy of several highspeed crashes that took months of recovery.

Now, he faces a challenge of a different sort. He was recently diagnosed with cancer of the oesophagus and stomach. Refusing chemotherapy, he plans to battle the disease with an extraordinary diet of fruit and vegetables devised by Austrian healer, Rudolf Breuss. Here, he discusses his decision to fight the disease the alternative way in Australia, where he now lives with his wife Stephanie, his daughter Sidonei, 17, and 13-year-old son Freddie.

'I've always prided myself on being extremely fit. I eat the right things, I don't like drugs and I stopped smoking five years ago. In July, I was eating some bread and realised I needed a glass of water to wash it down. My throat felt really weird, so I went to have a check-up by a friend who is a surgeon.

He came in to give me the endoscopy results and just said, "Bloody hell Baz, it's cancer." It was the best way to tell me. I like to know what's going on and I don't like bull****. But I was pretty devastated. There is such a stigma surrounding cancer. As far as everyone-is concerned it's a death sentence, so it was a massive shock to myself and to Stephanie. I used to smoke heavily, 40 non-filtered cigarettes a day, but apparently this is nothing to do with smoking. I think that the reason so many people have cancer is because of the things we eat. Hormones are pumped into meat and there are pesticides on most fruits and vegetables.

But I don't care. It doesn't matter what the cause is. I don't know how long I've had it for and I'm not interested. There is no use worrying about things you can't do anything about. It's happened. It's a pain in the arse and I have no respect for cancer whatsoever. I think it's a horrible cretin of a disease and I'm going to do everything I can to stop it having power over me. I was told I needed six weeks of chemotherapy then an operation that is as heavy as a heart and lung transplant. They cut half your stomach away and take your oesophagus out. But I believe that we were given a whole body and that's the way we should stay. And I really don't believe in chemotherapy because I couldn't bring myself to be poisoned.

So I spent the next month reading everything I could lay my hands on. I spoke to as many people as I could and had a completely open mind. I found out that a massive amount of people have been cured by approaching it in an alternative way. My decision was to follow Rudolf Breuss's regime. For three weeks I didn't eat anything but vegetable juice, herbal extracts and water. Apart from losing a stone in weight I feel fine, very fit. Now I'm eating a diet that is along the same lines, a massive amount of fresh vegetables and fruit, all grown organically without any drugs.

The idea is that it makes your immune system pull itself into line and start working again. Also there is something called B17 made from apricot seeds. The cancer growth gives out a certain glucose and when it mixes with B17 it creates a natural cyanide that kills the cancer. But they restrict it in America and ban it in Australia because they can't make any money from it. The chemotherapy business in the US is a trilliondollar business and more people live off cancer than die off it.

The medical profession doesn't want to know anything about something that doesn't generate money. If I can get over this thing the way I intend to, I will spend as much money as I've got to publicise how I've done so, and how wrong it is that it's not freely available.

About nine years ago I had chronic fatigue syndrome and went all over the world looking for a cure. The leading expert in Australia prescribed me anti-depressants. I said: "What are you talking about? I'm angry, not depressed that I've got this." I found a professor in London who had come up with a cold-water therapy which involves submerging yourself in a bath every day for 20 minutes. After three weeks, it completely relieved my symptoms and I felt fantastic. I actually flew down to Sydney to see the expert to tell him about this new system and he didn't even pick up his pen. He just wasn't interested because it had nothing to do with the medical profession. That sums up my opinion of a vast amount of doctors. Unless they can earn a buck out of it, they are not interested.

The medical profession is not going to get its hands on me, though. I'm going to do it my way and I don't care what anybody else says. It's my body, and it's up to me. My family are incredibly supportive. We went and got the kids out of boarding school for a long weekend to tell them. They were obviously devastated and incredibly upset to start with, but I promised them that it wasn't going to kill me so I can't let them down. I told them there is no way I'm going to leave them. So I have to beat this, for them.

When I was first diagnosed, Stephanie said: "I don't know whether I can cope with this. I don't understand it. It's not like a broken arm." But, in fact she is coping fantastically well. When I had my big accident, people asked me if it had brought us any closer but the answer is the same now; it hasn't brought us any closer because nothing could bring us closer. We are as close now as we were in 1976.

Right now I feel great. There are no real symptoms. I'm just extremely pissed off that I've got it. But I've never once thought, "Why me?" The only thing to do is to cope with it. I've always been a really positive person, the eternal optimist. And I've always believed in God. He's definitely looked after me before and I'm pretty sure he'll look after me this time. I plan to end up cured, with a whole stomach, and live happily every after. If it doesn't work that way, well that's the way it is supposed to be.