What happened to Paul Nicholls – throat tumour, depression and near-death fall

With his model looks and Nineties curtains, Paul Nicholls was one of the biggest heartthrobs of his time.

Thanks to his kids TV work on The Biz and Children’s Ward, Paul was already a teen pin-up when he joined EastEnders as schizophrenic Joe Wicks in 1995.

Aged just 16, Paul was voted TV’s sexiest actor twice as well as appearing on the cover of magazines including Smash Hits, Heat, Just Seventeen and Sugar.

Paul, 41 – who was seen running errands in North London in a rare sighting yesterday – also had flings with two of the soap’s leading ladies, Martine McCutcheon and Daniella Westbrook.

But the pressure of being a teenage heartthrob became too much and as his partying spiralled out of control, he quit Albert Square after just two years.

“People said I had too much too soon when I was playing Joe Wicks, and maybe they were right. I didn’t want to be a heart-throb, and I could not handle the attention,” he later told the Daily Mail.

He added: “I was well on my way to a total breakdown. I was drinking a lot and taking drugs.

“I had lost control of my life. The more I partied, the more I was telling myself, ‘Wow, this is what acting is all about.’

“Everything spun out of control. I had an appetite for craziness.”

Afterwards, Paul openly admitted struggling with depression and abusing alcohol and drugs to the point where he had no choice but to go tee-total.

“Although I was often out of it on drink and drugs, I was never so far gone that I didn’t know at the back of my mind that something had to give,” the Bolton-born star continued.

“The life I was living would have destroyed me and my career. So I made myself stop. I discovered I can’t just have a couple of drinks and then stop. It’s not in my make-up.”

He went on to star in Holby City, Ackley Bridge, Waterloo Road, Law and Order: UK and Bridget Jones: The Edge Of Reason.

And in 2012 he married Scottish model Chantal Brown – who was signed to Kate Moss’ agency and starred in adverts for Oil of Olay and Cornetto – after seven years of dating.

“I don’t even look at other women now,” he gushed of his bride. “She’s my soulmate.”

Then in 2016, Paul revealed on Loose Women that he’d had a terrifying cancer scare after mysteriously losing his voice for several months.

Doctors eventually found a tumour in his throat which was thankfully benign.

“It’s nerve-racking to be back on stage,” he said as he prepared for his role in a theatre production of Shawshank Redemption.

“I didn’t speak for a couple of months. It was a tumour rather than a nodule, in my vocal cords.”

And in 2017 he almost died after spending three days trapped in a Thai rock pool with a smashed leg.

The near-death accident happened after Paul left his hotel to go for a ride on his scooter around the island of Koh Samui and fell while reportedly trying to take a selfie.

Speaking on Loose Women afterwards, Paul recalled how he watched in horror as his knee cap split open during the gruesome fall.

“I thought the only way I can go is down but I didn’t realise how much I was bleeding. As soon as I touched the rock, I just went over. It was a 20ft drop and my knee hit something on the way down,” he said.

“It looked like something just flew out of my knee – part of my knee cap – and then I hit the water. Where my knee cap should have been, there was just a hole and I was holding it.”

His phone was smashed in the fall, and unable to seek help, Paul had no choice but to lie half submerged as leeches and crabs swarmed.

The alarm was eventually raised by bike hire company and by the time Paul was found, he was semi-conscious and suffering from hypothermia, two broken legs and an infection from his wounds.

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