Kent actor Patrick Murray has thanked NHS staff and praised his surgeon after a life-saving cancer operation.

Famed for his role as Mickey Pearce in Only Fools and Horses, the star from Higham explained how Professor Nigel Heaton had removed half of his liver, which had contained a tumour.

Patrick had already been undergoing chemotherapy treatment on his lungs, but announced on Twitter last week that he had undergone surgery for another tumour.

"I am going home today," he said. "Minus half a liver and a tumour that the wonderful Prof Heaton removed last week. I kept this under my hat that they'd discovered another primary cancer last year .

"I am a two person, that's for sure. High fives to all at Kings College Hospital."

He also told the Sun how he hoped to be declared free of cancer after a further scan, and that Professor Heaton had previously operated on footballer George Best.

"He was delighted with the outcome as the tumour wasn’t in a good place," he added. "So I’m eternally grateful to him.

"Amazingly, the liver will grow back in four weeks — I couldn’t believe it when he told me."

And Patrick said his main ambition was to get together a new reboot of Only Fools and Horses with co star David Jason.

“I’d love it," he told the newspaper. "Getting together again and with all the cast and seeing how all the characters have developed.

“Mickey will probably have a little Mickey running around. If the quality of the script was there, I imagine the others would be up for it too.”

He believed a new version of the show could be written by Jim Sullivan, son of Only Fools and Horses writer John Sullivan, who died in 2011.

While he hoped David Jason and other surviving stars would be keen to reprise their roles, he said he was unsure if Nicholas Lyndhurst would be involved.

Patrick remains a popular figure with Only Fools and Horses fans and is well known in Higham, where helped to reopen village pub The Gardeners Arms in 2017.