Bruce Dickinson's vocals are "a little bit better" since he battled cancer.

Bruce Dickinson

Bruce Dickinson

The Iron Maiden frontman underwent a seven-week course of chemotherapy and radiology after a cancerous tumour was discovered at the back of his tongue, and now the "top end" of his voice is "a little bit better" than before his treatment.

He said: "Two things are slightly different. One is my saliva, which obviously lubricates your throat a little bit, is a bit less than it used to be. Although, back ten years ago, if I had the same cancer, I wouldn't be making any saliva.

"But now, I'm probably 70 percent, which is great. Thanks very much, everybody upstairs. And the other things is that I think that the shape of possibly the back of my tongue, which forms vowel sounds and things like that, might have changed shape slightly, because, obviously, it had a big lump in it, and the lump's gone.

"So maybe the surface has changed shape. So I notice a few differences. Funnily enough, the top end of my voice is maybe even a little bit better than it was before."

The 59-year-old singer couldn't believe it when he was told the tumour had disappeared.

Speaking on Swedish TV show 'Malou Efter Tio', he said: "I was amazed. My cancer was a 3.5cm tumour in my throat and a 2.5cm one in my lymph node, and that was the one that I could feel - that was the secondary one.

"But I did 33 sessions of radiation and nine weeks of chemo at the same time, which is fairly standard therapy for it. And it was gone.

"And I said to my oncologist, 'What do you mean it's gone? Where has it gone?' And he said, 'Well, your body just gets rid of it.' A body is an amazing thing."

Bruce's Iron Maiden bandmate Steve Harris previously admitted the 'Number of the Beast' hitmaker was singing "better than ever" following his cancer treatment.

Speaking in 2016, he said: "It's a fantastic feeling just to be out there again, because last year we didn't know whether we even had a band, let alone a tour. Obviously, he's fine, he's singing fantastic - in fact, I think he's probably singing better than ever."