Moon Walk founder Nina Barough

NINA BAROUGH CBE, 61, lives in Berkshire with her husband guy and their young daughter. After a career as a fashion stylist, she organised the first Moon Walk in 1998, when 65 women walked through Central London at night in their bras to raise money for breast cancer charities. Since then, around 500,000 people have taken part in a Moon Walk.

BELIEVE it or not, the idea of walking a marathon in a bra came to me in a dream. I’d never taken part in a marathon, done any fundraising or even knew anything about breast cancer, but it was a really vivid dream — right down to it being in New York.

So I decided to act on it, and in November 1996 a small group of us walked the New York Marathon and raised £25,000 for Breakthrough Breast Cancer. At the time, walking in public wearing a bra was extremely controversial! Two months later, I was diagnosed with breast cancer and had to go through treatment. My family and friends wanted to support me, so another walk seemed the obvious way.

In 1998, we secured 25 places for the London Marathon, but when we asked for extra places the organisers said there were none. The woman on the phone was actually quite frosty, which got my back up so I said: ‘Right then, I’ll organise my own marathon.’

‘Well you can’t use our route,’ she replied — and that’s when my light bulb moment happened. We’d walk our own marathon, but to make it different we would do it at night and call it a Moon Walk.

Two decades on and there are Moon Walks in London, Scotland and Iceland, and we’ve raised millions for breast cancer charities.