Comedian Al Murray has urged people to “pack a parachute for a stranger” and join the stem cell register following the death of his eight-year-old nephew. The 58-year-old English comedian, best known for his Pub Landlord persona, lost his nephew Finley in 2021, who died from juvenile myelomonocytic leukaemia, a rare type of blood cancer.
Despite having two stem cell transplants, the treatment did not work, and this has fuelled Murray’s calls to encourage the public to help others “escape cancer” by increasing the chances of finding a match.
Anthony Nolan’s Half a Chance campaign
Partnering with Anthony Nolan, Murray features in its new campaign, Half a Chance, which highlights that only 50% of blood cancer patients survive for five years or more after a donor stem cell transplant – where patients’ stem cells are replaced with those from a healthy donor. Set in a traditional pub, Murray appears alongside three stem cell transplant recipients, with three empty bar stools next to them, representing those in need of a transplant.
Speaking to the Press Association, he said: “Seeing my brother-in-law and his wife lose their son, and seeing the fact that there was a chance of defeating this, of escaping from the cancer via stem cell donation, you just think, well, more people need to know about that. It feels like you’re being asked to pack a parachute for a stranger. Why wouldn’t you go on this register? Why wouldn’t you do this? Particularly as the chances are they won’t call you.”
How stem cell donation works
Signing up to the register does not mean you will automatically go on to donate your stem cells, as it may be that there are no patients with your tissue type. According to the Anthony Nolan website, 90% of donations are collected through your bloodstream while 10% are collected from the bone marrow. Both procedures are carried out thousands of times every year and are very safe.
Murray said he is on the register but is too old, and that it needs younger people aged 16-30 as well as people from different backgrounds to help increase the possibility of matches and, ultimately, someone’s survival. He said: “It’s a sort of numbers game. The more people they have, the more data they have, the better they understand it, the better they can increase people’s chances of survival. It’s like buying a lottery ticket, but someone else wins. When you meet the people who’ve had the stem cell treatment and it’s worked, they are 100% aware they’ve got this second chance that they’ve been rescued by a stranger – by a stranger’s intervention. It’s a beautiful thing that you could do if you got on the register.”
Remembering Finley
His nephew Finley would have been 13 and was described by Murray as a “terrific” and a “jolly little boy”. “There isn’t a day we don’t think about him,” he said. “Watching people lose a child is probably the worst thing you can be adjacent to, apart from losing one yourself. It was a horrible, horrible, bitter experience. It’s punishing, aside from the anguish and the anxiety of a child dealing with an illness like that, what it does, it turns your life upside down, I think is really quite extreme. There is a way to get round this terrible, terrible pernicious illness.”
