‘Great to have sport stars on board raising awareness’

Cammy graham’s profile is high enough to get youngsters to sit up and take notice. someone like him is brilliant because he has the ear of youth. It’s obviously not great what he went through but it’s good in so far that he can spread that message with his peers. We love having someone like him around because he just says it like it is as well. he doesn’t wrap anything up and he is so down to earth. When you speak with him, it’s from the heart. he’s a great ambassador for us and he’s a lovely kid. From a footballing perspective, we recognise the issues that sporting people face. years ago, I don’t think skin care was particularly looked at when it came to the care of players. They get every other check known to man — their heart, everything else — but when it came to skin, no one paid much attention to it and certainly not the footballers themselves because they would be out there soaking up the sun. It’s great that we can get the message out with our organisation and the sporting people who have been affected by it. We have to overcome the problem of people not being wary all year round by way of education. If you were speaking to anyone about checking testicles, breasts and bowels, you wouldn’t say: ‘Just check it in the summer months’. That’s ridiculous. your whole body is covered in skin, so we’d say to do a skin check every four to six weeks all year round — not just in the summer. Even on the dullest of days, the sun can still break through the cloud. We’ve still got such a long way to go when it comes to education. We’re better than we were — but we could be a lot better. It’s not even just about damage that can occur with melanoma and non-melanoma skin cancers, which are increasing in numbers as well. It’s about the ageing of the skin. Even if you’re not really bothered about whether you burn or not, it’s important to think about the ageing process. skin cancer is like a lot of diseases — it doesn’t discriminate. We’ve got a lot of men in their 80s but also a lot of young people. The youngest patient that I’ve spoken to over the years has been 12. It does disproportionally affect the young but we are noticing now there are more older people being diagnosed. That’s because we’re getting better with diagnosis. It does spread across the years.