The man who changed Casey Donovan's life: 'He is everything to me'

Casey Donovan knows that family is what you make it.

After her biological father Merv Donovan left the family, Norm Axford - Casey's mum's boyfriend and eventual husband - stepped in.

"He's been in my life for about 27 years," Casey exclusively tells TheFIX of Norm, 65. "We moved in with him when I was 2 and been there ever since."

And the 29-year-old singer-songwriter says Norm is "everything" to her.

"He's the dad that I know," Casey says. "He's got a big heart."

He was there when Casey learned to walk, started her first day of school, and got her big break winning Australian Idol at the tender age of 16.

But following her overnight fame, her birth dad Merv suddenly wanted to reclaim his place in the family.

"My biological father was absent for most of my adolescent life," she revealed on I'm a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here! earlier this year. "When I was doing the live [Idol] shows, I would get calls from him.

"I just said, 'Who are you? You're dead to me, mate. You don't want to be there when I'm normal, and now that I'm on television you want to be there.''  

But through it all, her stepdad's support and guidance has been unwavering.

"He talks to me on a very level basis," she tells us. "He talks me through a lot of things... I'm very emotional, so I've gotta look at things in a different light. And he's just always there. He's a really good guy and someone that I look up to and always will."

Devastatingly, Norm was diagnosed with stage-one pancreatic cancer this year.

"Not many people find it at stage one so we're very lucky that he showed symptoms and got it checked out very quickly," she explains.

Casey found out about the diagnosis in March while she was overseas filming I'm a Celebrity's finale.

"I wasn’t aware of anything that was going on," Casey says. "To be released back into the world and hear that was kind of destroying."

But Norm is a fighter.

"He's doing really well," she says. "He's just started doing radiation. He's taking it in his stride and just being positive, and that's all we can ask for him to be."

For more information about pancreatic cancer, please visit Pancare.