Sir Elton John said he asked his surgeon for his removed kneecaps and later had one fitted into a piece of jewellery, a detail revealed in his new documentary Touched By Gold.

The 78-year-old musician told viewers he "startled" his doctor with the request after undergoing knee replacement surgeries. "My surgeon said I had the worst knees he’s ever operated on," Elton said, adding that a hole in one kneecap made the bone look "a bit like an old artifact from Egypt."

Jeweller Theo Fennell, who worked with Elton on the piece, described the process of preparing the bone for use in a pendant. "We had to bake them to dry them out," he said, explaining that the bones become porous and raw like pumice stone and then are coated, polished and trimmed with gold. Fennell said he inscribed the phrase "I will no longer bow to any man" on the back of the finished piece, a detail he presented with humour, noting it was hard to fully apply to a kneecap.

Elton first wore the necklace publicly at the American Express Gala during the London Film Festival premiere of his biopic Never Too Late in October. At a later screening in New York, he quipped, "To be honest with you, there's not much of me left," listing a series of surgeries and removals that have altered his body over recent years. "I don't have tonsils, adenoids or an appendix. I don't have a prostate. I don't have a right hip or a left knee or a right knee. In fact, the only thing left to me is my left hip. But I'm still here. And I can't thank you [enough], you're the people that made me."

The singer has had both knees replaced and had his right hip replaced after a fall that prompted the postponement of his Farewell Yellow Brick Road tour in 2021. He played his final scheduled shows in the summer of 2023 and has since described a period of recuperation at home.

In an Instagram post last year, Elton said he had been treated for a severe eye infection that left him with limited vision in one eye. He wrote that recovery was "an extremely slow process" but expressed gratitude for his medical team and family and said he was "feeling positive about the progress" he had made.

Touched By Gold, which includes the kneecap segment, traces aspects of Elton's personal life and long career, combining archival footage, interviews and reflections on his health and retirement from touring. The jewelled kneecap has drawn attention as an unconventional example of how public figures sometimes repurpose personal medical history into artefacts of identity and memoir.