How the Mail’s been campaigning for 20 years to beat disease
THE Daily Mail transformed the nation’s approach to ‘forgotten disease’ prostate cancer two decades ago.
Our Dying of Embarrassment campaign faced up to the taboo disease killing one British man every hour.
It changed lives. Launched in 1999, just before the end of the millennium, we appealed to our readers to raise an ambitious £1million to tackle the scourge of the ‘cancer no one talks about’.
Within two months, we had raised £350,000. The full £1million arrived in just four months as concerned readers flocked to the cause, and the Southon Charitable Trust – whose founder Arthur Southon died of the disease – doubled readers’ donations. Yet the overwhelming generosity was only half the victory. Perhaps more importantly than the money, we had raised awareness of the illness that too many men were trying to ignore until it was too late.
For too long, prostate cancer was greeted with giggles, embarrassment or a shocked silence. Masculinity, virility, the very essence of what it was to be a man, was somehow challenged by prostate cancer.
But the Mail’s campaign gave many men the courage to discuss it more openly.
Not that their loved ones waited for them to do so – a truly heartening aspect was the number of wives who told us they had put the Daily Mail down in front of their husbands and commanded: ‘Read that.’
It sparked debate about how best to beat the disease, with MPs taking their cue from the Mail’s readers. By early 2000, searching questions were asked in the House of Commons about the appalling lack of funding to tackle it – and why survival rates in the US were double those in Britain.
Conservative MP Andrew Rowe stunned a packed Commons when he intervened at Prime Minister’s Questions to reveal he was battling the condition.
The Old Etonian – with a background epitomised by the stiff upper lip mentality – bravely confessed his disease to MPs and
vowed: ‘I don’t intend to let prostate cancer kill me.’ He survived until 2008 aged 73.
Ministers too began to take the disease more seriously, with the then government of Tony Blair matching Mail readers’ £1million. During our fast-paced campaign, sacks full of cheques arrived every day.
A highlight was clinching the backing of boxing champion Muhammad Ali. He attended a dinner at the Savoy Hotel in London, where 100 people paid £1,000 each.
Moved by our campaign, actor and presenter Lionel Blair revealed he had had treatment for prostate cancer. It became a topic men felt more comfortable talking about. Businessman Ted Clucas, from Jersey, told in the Mail of his struggle to the end with the secrecy surrounding the disease which ‘no one was taking seriously’.
BBC radio 4’s Today programme highlighted the Mail’s campaign and commercial broadcasters gave free airtime to it.
The money we raised went to the Prostate Cancer Charity which, at the time, was the only charity devoted to helping sufferers – compared with breast cancer which had 150 organisations fighting it.
But most importantly, the campaign shattered the tendency of men to suffer in silence, and prompted thousands to get themselves checked.