The Charities

The whole aim of the Grand Charity Ball is to celebrate my 20 years of health since undergoing open heart surgery. We've decided to split all the proceeds of the event between two very worthy and relevant charities.

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The British Heart Foundation

Heart and circulatory disease is the UK’s biggest killer. Cardiovascular disease (CVD) accounted for just over 216,000 deaths in the UK in 2004 - around four out of every ten deaths. In the UK, someone has a heart attack every two minutes.

Nearly all deaths from CHD are because of a heart attack. Around 230,000 people in the UK suffer a heart attack each year. In around 30 per cent of heart attacks, the patient dies.

The British Heart Foundation is the largest source of funds for independent heart research in this country.

Founded in 1961, the two thousand BHF staff and 10,000 volunteer workers share a common vision:

Within a generation, we will create a world where people do not die prematurely of heart disease. We will achieve this through our pioneering research, our vital prevention activity and by ensuring quality care and support for people living with heart disease. We need you to share our vision because, together, we really can beat heart disease.

BHF focusses on three things:

Investing in pioneering research - we fund around 1,200 research projects investigating every aspect of heart disease - from causes and safer drugs to improving surgical techniques
Supporting and caring for heart patients – we fund BHF Nurses who visit heart patients with all types of heart conditions in their homes. We provide defibrillators and echocardiograph machines for hospitals, emergency services and first-aiders
Providing vital information to help people reduce their own risk of dying prematurely from a heart or circulatory related illness - we produce publications, videos and other materials for health professionals and the public including children. We inform people about how to improve the health of their heart through public information campaigns, advertising and the media

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Cardiac Risk in the Young (CRY)

CRY is a charity founded in May 1995 to raise awareness of Cardiac Risk in the Young - Sudden Cardiac Death (SCD), Sudden Death Syndrome (SDS, SADS). Every week 8 'apparently' fit and healthy young people die in the UK from undiagnosed heart conditions.

CRY offers support to those who have suffered a loss through a network of affected families & counselling, CRY promotes heart screening, ECG Testing Programmes & contributes to medical research and has donated medical equipment to doctors' surgeries and hospitals.

Honorary president of CRY is Sir Ian Botham OBE, with David Walliams, Sir Steven Redgrave and Rob Andrew MBE all in the Patrons line-up.

I've chosen to support CRY to ensure not only that it receives some valuable financial input, but also as a means to further raise it's profile.

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You can make a donation through Paypal using the link button on each page. Payment can be taken from all major credit cards, and all payments received will be split equally between the two charities.