'Positive frame of mind' - Mike Peters

The Rhyl musician is back on the road with his band The Alarm, who also release a new single on Monday.

"Being a rock and roll singer gets me out of the house and keeps me focused," he told BBC Wales.

He recently underwent his third course of chemotherapy after being told of the illness in December, 10 years after he was originally diagnosed with cancer.

The Denbighshire-based singer is being treated for Chronic Lymphocytic Leukaemia (CLL) at Glan Clwyd Hospital.

CLL, sometimes referred to as blood cancer, is the most common type of leukaemia and mainly affects people over 60. It is rare in people under the age of 40.

'Fill that void'

Peters, 46, said: "I'm feeling fine. I've decided to press on with as much as I can around the treatment," he told BBC Radio Wales.

"It's important to keep a positive frame of mind. I can feel it here and there but it's important to stand up to it [the cancer] a little bit.

"I'm lucky being an itinerant musician - some people have to give up their jobs.

"The difficulty with cancer is that you have treatment that takes up maybe two or three days, then you have two or three weeks when you don't go to hospital or see your doctor.

"It's about how to spend that time and beat your illness. I try to keep busy and do as much as I can to fill that void".

Peters with trademark hairstyle in the heyday of The Alarm

The new single Superchannel is released on Monday, with an album Under Attack later this month.

The group are also organising monthly live dates, which started with two shows in Llandudno at the end of January and will continue with a concert in Cardiff on 25 February.

The Alarm formed 25 years ago, with songs such as Sixty Eight Guns and Spirit Of '76 becoming 80s rock classics.

The band split in the early 1990s but Peters put a new line-up together five years ago and they are now back on a major label.

Two years ago, the group put out a single in the name of a spoof young punk band, which reached the top 30.

Peters was also voted number 11 in an online poll of 100 Welsh heroes, ahead of Bertrand Russell and Catherine Zeta Jones.