Max Clifford on Christopher's Smile

Originally published in Surrey Life magazine December 2011

Elmbridge resident Max Clifford's monthly Surrey Life column gives us an insight into his busy life in the county and beyond...

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It takes very special people to have the desire, energy and ability to turn their own personal tragedy into a means of helping countless others.

I spoke at a recent ladies lunch, at the beautiful Foxhills country club in Ottershaw, to help raise funds and awareness for Christopher’s Smile, a children’s cancer charity.

Kevin and Karen Capel, from Lightwater, lost their only child Christopher to a brain tumour in 2008. Their son was five years old when he lost his 21-month battle. 

Four months after their tragedy, Kevin and Karen set up the charity Christopher’s Smile in their son’s memory, and its aim is reflected in their vision ‘for every child diagnosed with cancer to not only survive, but to reach adulthood enjoying a good quality of life’.

The vast majority of the population regards cancer as an adult disease, yet every day in the UK, four children are diagnosed with it. In addition, childhood cancer claims the life of one child every day in the UK. This statistic is not widely known but is reflected in the  Christopher’s Smile tag line: ‘coz kids get cancer too’.

Kevin and Karen’s experience presented the harsh reality of the high number of children that do not survive. For those kids that do survive, the term ‘cured’ does not portray the true picture.  

Their treatment can leave them with a multitude of issues, such as sensory loss or impairment, internal organ damage and for some bone cancer survivors the loss of limbs. The average patient age of the ten most commonly used drugs to treat childhood cancer is nearly 50 years. Karen and Kevin believe that children with cancer deserve better than this.

Christopher’s Smile funds the development and testing of new targeted anti-cancer agents that will not only be more effective than current treatments but also have far fewer side effects, and every penny of every donation is used to fund their amazing work.

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