Review of 2025

HEALTH UPDATE

2025 was a strange year from a health perspective as it was plagued by minor illnesses and viruses that, individually, were something and nothing but cumulatively were a pain. The most important thing is I ended another year with an undetectable PSA and my cancer completely under control. I am truly blessed and feel very lucky especially compared to friends who were lost this year and others who are struggling as I write this.

I had cold after cold for the first 6 months of the year. When I got over one I got hit by another. I also developed tree pollen induced asthma due to now living surrounded by trees and, completely out of the blue my GP told me I had a heart murmur that needed investigating. Thankfully all is well with that and the asthma cleared up with strong steroids.

Annoyingly I developed ringworm on my face that the GP didn’t diagnose properly and gave me steroid cream that made things much worse. Thankfully this also got sorted after a change of meds and a few weeks of looking a mess.

All these minor ailments seem to highlight the impact of long term cancer treatment, particularly steroids, on my immune system. It’s been frustrating because every time I got back to doing some better running and building up distance again I got hit by something else. However, the most important thing is that I got through it and I’m still living quite well with cancer.

Finally on the health front the surgeon who replaced my knee signed me off, 12 months after surgery.

PATIENT ADVOCACY

I think it fair to say that my work as patient advocate went up to new levels in 2025 and I hope that I’m making a difference to how health care professionals (HCP’s) care for their patients as I’ve emphasised the need for better holistic care and access to support like psychosexual therapy which is so badly needed but so difficult to access. I’ve continued to try my best to raise awareness of prostate cancer to ensure that as few men as possible end up like me, diagnosed too late. Apart from my usual awareness talks the work that we are doing at Tackle Prostate Cancer where I’m a Trustee and Vice Chair is immense. Supporting c. 150 support groups across the UK, developing new groups in areas of most need and our “Make Sense of It” initiative to train mentors to support newly diagnosed men through the treatment decision making process is incredible and really making a difference. We’re grateful to the National Lottery and Movember for the funding to make this possible.

Having been a patient advocate speaker in symposia at the European Association of Urologists conference in Paris – The patient experts view on guidance and goals to improving patient care and then the European Association of Nuclear Medicine Congress in Hamburg – Exploring Novel Combinations in metastatic prostate cancer, the patient perspective in care, I was asked to speak at the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) in Berlin – Advancing Personalized Care for Prostate Cancer. ESMO is one of the biggest cancer conferences in the World. 36,000 + attendees, 6 exhibition halls and all the big pharmaceutical companies exhibiting so it was quite an honour to be part of a panel with leading oncologists from around the world Prof. Fred Saad from Canada, Assoc. Prof Alicia Morgans from the USA and Prof. Christian Gratzke from Germany. Not too shabby for a council estate scrote from Altrincham! What a privilege to try to help shape the way HCP’s care for men living with advanced prostate cancer.

Whilst at ESMO I met with Novartis, Johnson & Johnson and Prostate Cancer Research and recorded two brilliant educational video’s with my wonderful friend Prof. Alison Birtle about PSA testing post diagnosis and the impact on sexuality of Androgen Deprivation Therapy.

I’m now on the international patient panels for four pharmaceutical companies and again, trying to make a difference in the way men living with PCa are cared for.

I had the privilege of being part of a patient Q&A panel at Prostate Cancer Research Meet The Scientists conference with my friends Maurice Blake and Alphonso Archer and it was interesting that we all sang from the same hymn sheet that holistic care is either really poor or non existent.

The fight for a prostate cancer screening programme went up a gear and I was very much involved with Prostate Cancer Research’s #proactiveforyourprostate campaign including recruiting my MP (see below) and doing several Radio interviews on local radio to recruit support. I had the pleasure to attend a PCR padel contest and then be interviewed before dinner by Claudia Winkelman with Oliver Kemp (CEO PCR) and Nick Jones (Founder Soho House) at Soho House Farm with the aim to ensure that key influencers present truly understood why screening is so vital. Dinner itself was quite surreal as I firstly sat with Jack Whitehall and later in the evening with Michael McIntyre (name dropping I know).

During the period leading up to the National Screening committees decision I’ve been very vocal about the harms of late diagnosis and I also wrote this article for Tackle on the subject. https://tackleprostate.org/harms-of-late-prostate-cancer-diagnosis/

One of the major issues with the NSC decision not to start a targeted screening programme, is what we are left with which is basically making sure men are aware of their risk and ask their GP’s for a PSA blood test. This creates huge health care inequalities as men from poorer socioeconomic backgrounds and men from ethnic backgrounds aren’t aware of their risk, frequently don’t engage with health care professionals and, as a result get left behind and are diagnosed way too late when they can’t be cured. Then, when men pluck up the courage to engage with GP’s they run the gauntlet of GP’s refusing to follow their own guidelines and refusing men tests when they ask for them. The most common comment at my awareness talks is “My GP said no” and this is a story mirrored by Tackle’s support groups. I therefore wrote to all the Integrated Care Boards in England on behalf of Tackle expressing concerns about the issue and asking what we could to do to help their GP’s. Responses were sparse but did lead to me doing two Protected Learning Time sessions for GP’s in Leicester and Rutland in conjunction with Prostate Cancer UK which resulted in the ICB changing their process for referral of men to urology so that a digital rectal examination is no longer required. GP’s also left the sessions better informed and, particularly, of the risk they face in refusing men PSA tests. We are now working with PCUK to develop these training sessions for GP’s.

One of my passions is the value of exercise for cancer patients and, during 2025, I spoke at two national prehabilitation conferences as a patient expert and chaired half a day of one of those conferences. Feedback has been outstanding and I’m invited back again in 2026.

I am lead patient Co-collaborator for a clinical research trial that successfully obtained several million pounds of funding during 2025 and will run for 4-5 years commencing in 2026 to work on improving outcomes for men diagnosed with prostate cancer. This is multi centre, UK wide trial and could be a game changer in care for men and I’m delighted to lead on Patient, Public Involvement (PPI). More detail to follow once contracts are signed and we can start recruiting. Additionally I am a named collaborator in the grant application for another possible trial.

I was approached by Councillor Pat Karney and asked to address a full meeting of Manchester City Council about why early diagnosis of prostate cancer was so important and to support a motion to run a Greater Manchester wide prostate cancer awareness campaign. That motion was passed and I had a superb response from the councillors. I have also been asked to lead on the campaign in 2026. This was covered in the Manchester Evening News article below and my passionate speech can be seen about 10 minutes into this recording Agenda for Council on Wednesday, 26th November, 2025, 10.00 am

There’s loads more I could write about in this section but I’ll finish by mentioning another successful year of Paint Altrincham Blue raising awareness of men’s health issues supported by Altrincham Business Improvement District. I did a couple of awareness talks for local businesses one of which was also broadcast to a branch in the Netherlands. Our comedy night was a great success. Whilst raising awareness is the main aim of PAB we should also have raised over £4100. Very grateful to all Altrincham businesses for their support particularly the BID, Tesco Extra, Altrincham Football Club Community Sports, McHale and Co and many others.

MEDIA AND HEALTH EDUCATION WORK

I had a fair bit of press and media work later in the year. Partly because I was asked by Bayer to do their radio day and then because of the National Screening Committees decision not to agree a screening programme.

This article is from the Manchester Evening News ‘I was training for an ultra-marathon and felt a groin strain – 10 days later I had terminal cancer’ – Manchester Evening News

This is one from the Telegraph that highlights the effectiveness of prostate cancer screening via an initiative in a local GP practice run by Carl Armstrong. Also great to see our MP Sarah Hall contributing to the article. I’ve met with Sarah twice in her constituency office and managed to get her to join the All Party Parliamentary Group on prostate cancer and then met her at an event at parliament for the launch of Prostate Cancer Research’s report of the value of a targeted screening programme for prostate cancer My life was saved by a text message I wasn’t supposed to receive

This one is from the BBC’s website Prostrate cancer test would have saved me, says Altrincham man – BBC News

The next one is a link to a recording of an interview I did live on air for ITV Granada News on a day of interviews I did on radio, TV and for podcasts on behalf of Bayer whose agency arranged the sessions. You’ll find me about 10 minutes in and I was trying to get the message across that men with metastatic prostate cancer are getting inadequate care https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hxLZwK46E6A

And this is one I’m very proud of as I featured in Runners World with the headline “The first question I asked my oncologist was “Will I still be able to run?”” I got some great feedback from other cancer patients who were inspired by the stories in the article.

I also recorded numerous podcasts and educational videos for health care professionals that I truly hope make a difference in the quality of care that prostate cancer patients receive. There’s a lot of work to do! This is one I did for CANCERCANDOONE which is a very open discussion on the impact of hormone therapy on sexuality ‘A Better Man’: How Incurable Prostate Cancer Remade Tony. | #CancerCanDoOne. After awareness, then what?

THE HARSH REALITY OF PROSTATE CANCER (THE ULTIMATE HARM)

At this time of the year it’s important to reflect about the ultimate harm of late diagnosis of prostate cancer. Whilst the National Screening Committee and anti screening establishment focus on the possible harms of overtreatment that screening might lead to, everyone seems to forget about the harms of late diagnosis that I highlighted in my harm article for Tackle.

Sadly in 2025 we lost Stephen Whittingham who regrettably only survived three years from diagnosis before we lost him at age 63. We also lost another friend and amazing patient advocate, Gary Hooker who had done remarkably well to survive 14 years from diagnosis but is a reminder that you don’t outrun stage 4 prostate cancer.

I was privileged to meet Gary a couple of times in London and to run with Stephen who, like me, was really passionate about 5K Your Way and was involved as an ambassador at Macclesfield and Nova Prestatyn 5K Your Way with his lovely family who I know miss him so much as indeed do Gary’s family, particularly his grandchildren.

I also think about all those men who are doing less well than me and have run or are running out of treatment options. In many cases, like my own, there would be much better outcomes if we had a screening programme and maybe we wouldn’t be losing 12,000 men every year to prostate cancer.

MUSIC AND HOLIDAYS

As usual for Tracey and I we went to loads of concerts in 2025. Main highlights were seeing Post Malone supported by Jelly Roll in Arnhem, Netherlands and Bruce Springsteen in Manchester

We managed to get to Tenerife for our winter break in January which was lovely and the new knee even allowed to do some gentle jogging as well as way more walking than the same time in 2024.

We were absolutely blown away by our walking holiday in Slovenia and I wrote about this in this article https://runningintocancer.co.uk/2025/07/29/movement-matters/

There’s so much more I could talk about but I’ll close (well done for getting this far) by talking about my family. My first Grandson, Ethan, was three when I was told that I might only have 2-3 years to live and I never dreamed that I’d get to see him become become a teenager. Well he’s 13 in August 2026 and I’m hopeful that I will. I’ve also been blessed with three more grandchildren, Marnie, Finn and Lumen and they together with my children and the woman who is our family rock, the amazing Tracey, keep me going and motivated to stay as well as I can which is also part of my contract with my medical team. Exercise is a massive part of that so I’ll always keep on keeping on!