Lineker: Why I’m so proud to support this haven of hope
CONTINUING our landmark series of pullouts to mark the 30th anniversary of the indispensable Good Health section, here are more inspiring stories, practical advice and medical breakthroughs taken from our archives. Today, we look at a disease — cancer — where these advances have had a major impact, slashing death rates. There is much for cancer patients and their families to be hopeful about. But for too many, there is heartbreak — highlighted in this moving interview with Gary Lineker from 2005, where the TV sports presenter spoke about his support for a hospice for desperately-ill children, and the agony of watching his own son, George, then a baby, undergo gruelling — but ultimately successful — treatment for leukaemia...
WDecember 20, 2005
HEN Gary Lineker turned up to open a new playroom at the Kent hospice [Demelza House], there was a subdued atmosphere in the normally bustling living areas.
‘They’d lost two children that day,’ he recalls. ‘It was hard to get away from that. The other kids were delighted to be getting a new facility, but there was a note of sobriety about the whole event. It brought it home to me what an amazing job these people actually do, in circumstances most of us would consider impossible.’
Like most celebrities Lineker, a former footballer turned sports TV presenter, gets his fair share of requests from charities. But when he was asked to become involved with Demelza House, he didn’t hesitate to say yes.
And there was a deeply personal reason why the father of four wanted to lend his support to the charity.
Thirteen years ago, Lineker discovered just how difficult it can be for a family to cope alone in the face of a child’s critical illness.
His eldest son, George, was diagnosed with leukaemia when he was just a baby.
Lineker and his then wife, Michelle, spent much of George’s early life at his bedside in Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children, in London, where tiny George underwent chemotherapy.
Although the treatment appeared to be successful immediately, George did not get the all-clear until he was five. Memories of those painful days are clearly never far from Lineker’s mind.
‘When I come to a place like Demelza and see families who are so anxious, it does all come flooding back,’ he explains.
‘No family who has ever had to sit by a child’s bedside, racked with worry, will ever forget how awful it feels. But there was a big difference with us.
‘When George was ill, we always had hope that he would get better, and we clung to that hope. I think being positive was the only way we could have got through it. The families here, though, have had to face the worst. Most have had to accept that their children will never get better. Some are right at the end.’ He shudders. ‘The strength of character you see in a place like this really is humbling.
‘I honestly don’t know how some families do it — but places like this really do seem to help them cope with the impossible.’ When he visits Demelza House — where he spends time talking to the parents, or kicking a football about with the youngsters — Lineker does not talk about his own family, save to say that he understands, to a point, what they are going through.
‘It’s very different,’ he explains. ‘I never make a big deal about what happened to us, but most people know that we’ve had experience with a very ill child, and they seem to appreciate that.
‘But I wouldn’t say for one minute that I understand what they are going through because I don’t. You can’t unless you have to go down that route.’
With each visit, however, he returns home — to his own four boisterous sons — reminded of his own good fortune.
Perhaps this is why Lineker has long immersed himself in the fundraising arena.
As well as supporting Demelza House, he is a tireless campaigner for London children’s hospital Great Ormond Street.
He also supports leukaemia charities, and was a high-profile campaigner for donor cards.
‘Part of me would like to forget about what we went through, but I just can’t do that, and putting a little back is perhaps our way of saying thank you, and perhaps helping other people in the process,’ he says.