VACCINE HEROES HAILED We can’t ROS WYNNE-JONES
I would have walked across broken glass to give you this award
Pride of Britain is a song for unsung heroes. And since the moment Paul McCartney attended the first awards in 1999, its unofficial theme has always been All You Need Is Love.
And twenty-two years on, love remained at the very heart of this year’s glittering occasion.
Whether it was Gee Walker’s children saying, “We love you, Mum”, or Joanna Lumley telling organ donor campaigner Rosemary Cox she loved her, or Ed Sheeran’s love song to Harmonie-Rose Allen who lost her legs and arms to meningitis, love was all around.
It shone through the remarkable friendship between two young boys, Hughie Higginson and Freddie Xavi.
It was in the solidarity of Sands
United, the football team for dads who have lost babies. And it was in the camaraderie of the Oxford team who kept each other going to discover a world-changing vaccine.
In the year that Pride of Britain lost its own founder, Peter Willis, the nation’s most emotional awards ceremony was even more poignant than usual. Set against the backdrop of a Britain emerging from a global pandemic, it felt more important than ever to be together celebrating the best of us. At the last event in 2019, Covid did not yet exist. And in 2021, as Carol Vorderman thanked the Oxford Vaccine team, it was the first time in 22 years anyone had seen the awards co-host cry. A room full of famous faces, from ITV’s Simon Cowell to Hollywood’s Sharon Stone, and even Sausage from the Masked Singer, got to its feet for one of the longest standing ovations the Pride of Britain Awards, in partnership
with TSB, has ever seen. After taking place last year as a virtual event, Pride of Britain was only possible in person this year because of the hard work of vaccine scientists and NHS staff.
And many of us now have the Oxford jab fighting our bodies’ daily battle against the virus.
Hearing the team had lived on food from the university’s vending machines, desperately missing their families, added to the sense that these were ordinary people achieving extraordinary things.
The team brushed off their incredible achievement – which has led to 1.7 billion doses of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine being distributed around the world.
“It’s lucky that Mini Cheddars and Bounty bars are two of your five a day,”
Dr Catherine Green OBE laughed. And Prof Sir Andrew Pollard said: “We’re all pretty ordinary people, just doing our normal jobs in an unusual time.”
As broadcaster Stephen Fry presented the team with their award, he said: “It’s only true heroes who think they aren’t heroes.”
“I would have walked across broken glass to give you this award. Never have the three words ‘Pride of Britain’ been more deserving.”
Actress Sharon Stone also spoke for many, as she overcame the tragic loss of her baby nephew to present Syrian refugee Hassan Alkhawam, with the Prince’s Trust Award.
“It’s really lovely to see people again,” she said. “I’ve been crying all night.”
Fittingly, for a year when we remembered Peter’s passion in creating and
sustaining these awards, this was an incredible group of winners.
There was something unmistakably Pride of Britain about 53-year-old Stephen Wharton, a part-time firefighter from Cumbria.
He had been called to the River Eden, where teenager Kacper Krauze was drowning in the icy water.
Stephen is a ‘wading first responder’ but after seeing Kacper’s distraught parents, he took off his safety equipment to dive down and save his life.
“We do get some ops discretion,” he said, before adding: “Diving down 15ft is pushing the boundaries a bit.”
Seven-year-old Harmonie-Rose Allen, a quadruple amputee, was completely unfazed by the bright lights. Listening to her karaoke duet with Ed Sheeran, Simon Cowell told
Harmonie her singing was better than Ed’s, but “don’t tell him”. Harmonie looked puzzled. “He’ll probably see it,” she said, politely.
One of the most moving moments of the night came as Rebecca Carless and Jamie McCallum were surprised by the cameras, thinking they were Pride of Britain guests, not winners.
The parents were behind a Carpool Karaoke-style video celebrating children with Down’s syndrome that went viral – and the extraordinary people just kept on coming.
Max Woosey, 12, has raised £640,000 for a local hospice by spending more than 500 nights sleeping through all weathers in a tent given to him by a dying neighbour.
Campaigning sisters Amy and Ella Meek, 18 and 16, set up a kids’ charity to help fight plastic pollution. Best pals Hughie and Freddie have raised more than £200,000 since Hughie was diagnosed with leukaemia – some of the money has gone on slushies for young patients enduring chemo.
And Rob Allen founded Sands Utd after he noticed no men were at the support groups for families struggling with baby loss.
Rosemary Cox, 82, campaigned to set up the first Organ Donor Register in the UK in memory of her son Peter.
Ex-Royal Marine and triple amputee Mark Ormrod has gone beyond what should be possible to raise over £450,000 for veterans’ charity REORG. And perhaps most extraordinary of all, Gee Walker, whose son Anthony was murdered in a racist attack in 2005, was rewarded for her kindness. For the past 16 years, she has worked tirelessly to promote racial harmony in Anthony’s name, and her capacity for forgiveness is almost unfathomable. “I will use my pain to make a difference,” she said, of the legacy she has built. “You can’t kill goodness.” On stage, in his own special way, Danny Dyer called soap fan Gee “Queen of all the Treacles”. Pride of Britain is also a legacy for
Peter, our friend and colleague, whose presence shone through the awards.
As Lloyd Embley, Group-Editor-inChief of Mirror owner Reach PLC, told the audience: “This was his baby – and we are going to do everything we can to look after it for him.”
When Peter devised Pride of Britain, people questioned which celebrities would turn up to see a bloke who had rescued someone.
But then Paul McCartney pitched up, just months after losing his wife Linda, and the rest is history.
The sky was the limit for Peter, who would have certainly wanted Lennon, too. Twenty-two years on, Pride of Britain continues to attract the nation’s A-list with its song for unsung heroes. And in 2021, it is a song our country has never needed more.