Roger Daltrey says touring made him “very, very seriously ill”.

The Who singer – who recently underwent surgery to remove a pre-cancerous growth from a vocal chord – has been plagued by health problems when on the road and was almost hospitalised with his medical difficulties.

He explained: “I was having terrible trouble hearing what I was singing and it did get to me.

“In fact, I’ve been suffering for quite a few of the previous tours. I never understood that if you sweat as much as I used to every night, you drain your body of salts.

“So I got very, very, seriously ill. I got to the stage where I was almost hospitalised with serious problems.”

Roger’s bandmate Pete Townshend suffers from tinnitus – a persistent ringing in the ears – and he admitted he has mixed views about performing with him again as he doesn’t want to “destroy” the guitarist’s hearing completely.

He told Rolling Stone magazine: “Pete is having terrible hearing problems at the moment. There’s nobody I’d rather be on stage with than Pete. But equally, I don’t want to be on stage with him destroying the last bit of his hearing. That would be completely foolish. He’s a composer.”

However, despite their health problems, the ‘My Generation’ hitmaker insists the pair have no plans to retire.

He added: “We’re in the last bits of our career. I feel that we owe it to the public that supported us all these years to go down with us.”