WORLD famous healer to the stars Matthew Manning has spoken for the first time about the death of his wife from cancer.Matthew, who has practiced his unorthodox brand of healing on the likes of John Cleese, Pope Paul VI, The Duke of Edinburgh and Van Morrison, spoke to the EADT from his home at Hartest, near Bury St Edmunds, about the loss his wife Gig, who died at home aged 47 on February 2 after battling a virulent strain of cancer.

WORLD famous healer to the stars Matthew Manning has spoken for the first time about the death of his wife from cancer.

Matthew, who has practiced his unorthodox brand of healing on the likes of John Cleese, Pope Paul VI, The Duke of Edinburgh and Van Morrison, spoke to the EADT from his home at Hartest, near Bury St Edmunds, about the loss his wife Gig, who died at home aged 47 on February 2 after battling a virulent strain of cancer.

When the late Duke of Bedford, then Marquis of Tavistock, suffered a stroke in 1988, sessions with Matthew helped restore the resultant loss of vision, as his wife, the Dowager Duchess, has testified, and besides treating patients and lecturing, Matthew's books have sold more than a million copies, he has appeared regularly on television as both a guest and presenter.

Gig, his partner of ten years who he married six years ago, had first been diagnosed with the disease in 1998, but was given the all-clear after a rigorous course of chemotherapy.

However, there was always a chance the cancer could resurface, and after she started experiencing mysterious back pains last year was eventually told the cancer had returned six months ago.

Matthew said: "None of us ever wants to lose a loved one, but we were able to say everything we wanted to say to each other in the last six months.

"That has made a painful time a little easier, Gig told me shortly before she died to 'go and get on with your life,'. It won't always be easy, but she was right.

"Life does continue and we all have to look forwards rather than backwards. I know it's what she would have wanted."

In spite of his mysterious gifts, which his co-host on ITV's Beyond Belief , Sir David Frost, described as 'literally beyond belief', Matthew is not a religious man, and Gig's life was celebrated in a typically creative fashion at the Suffolk Crematorium, where Gig's coffin was led in to the strains of Shirley Bassey's Diamonds are forever.

"She had a tremendous spirit and was always covered in diamonds and jewellery", said Matthew, "so it was a particularly fitting tribute."

The cremation was followed by a celebration of Gig's life at the couple's substantial home, where Matthew intends to scatter her ashes in the garden in accordance with her wishes, and is planning to erect a memorial stone.

Just two days after her death Matthew returned home to find a huge bouquet of flowers on the doorstep. He expected them to be from a friend or relative, but was amazed to discover they were from ITV's This Morning presenters Philip Schofield and Fern Britton, whose show he has appeared on several times.

Since then tributes have flooded in and donations, along with contributions from the proceeds of Gig's on-line poker games, have been made to the East Anglian Air Ambulance.

Contrary to popular belief, Matthew wholly endorses conventional medicine and said he often refers his patients, who sense a restorative heat radiating from his hands, to doctors, who are increasingly returning the favour.

He is also conscious of the fact that some people might have expected him to be able to cure his wife. He said: "I don't work miracles, there are four categories into which my patients fall. Either I can't help them at all, in which case I send them to a doctor.

"Sometimes I am able to slow the illness down, sometimes I am able to halt it, so it doesn't get any better but it doesn't get any worse, and some people I am able to cure completely.

"I think Gig fell into the slowing down category, with her particular strain of cancer she shouldn't have survived very long at all, but we had six months together and in the end it was time to let her go.

"As, I think it was Sting, said 'If you love someone, set them free.' "