One month after his birthday meal, and our mum was having to call an ambulance as he was in so much pain and struggling to move. He was admitted to hospital, extremely confused and not understanding what was going on – doctors advising he had extremely high levels of Calcium in his blood.

He was sent for an MRI a few days later, with the verdict delivered a few days later – bone cancer, and it was terminal. Pretty much his entire spine had been taken and the bone was starting to disintegrate, but had also spread to his ribs and other organs. The cancer was apparently secondary though; however, doctors couldn’t find any evidence of the primary. It wasn’t a tumor broken off from anywhere else, and myeloma was ruled out with tests a week later.

Early December 2022, I wanted to do some research into bone cancer, to try and understand what the primary cause could have been – that’s where I came across Bone Cancer Research Trust. Looking through their website at all the different types of bone cancer, nothing seemed to fit what my dad had, until I read about one in particular. Chordoma – it’s thought to develop from a tissue called Notochord, which is required during embryonic development, but there is sadly no strong evidence to support this. Nevertheless, this seemed to be the only plausible explanation I could fathom. It’s extremely rare, affecting only 1 in 800,000.

Papa Fletch aka Stewart by birth, but went by his middle name Allan socially, was an extremely prideful man, but also extremely stubborn. He always struggled with sensitive situations, especially in public, but always had the utmost love and pride in me and my sisters. Tears were shed by him at both mine and my sister Hayley’s weddings, with the beaming smile of a very proud father. He always had time for us, whatever we needed, he was there and more than willing to do what he could to help. He helped at mine and my wife’s old house to build a partition wall in the bathroom for a shower to be mounted, bent a thick hammer completely in half trying to pull up ridiculously big nails from floorboards, helped build large storage units into the wall, and various other odd jobs to help us make the house feel like a home.

He was always well liked at work, and in the local community where he was the snooker rep on the Village Hall Committee, but also part of the Social Club Committee which is connected to the Village Hall. Often spending evenings standing at the corner of the bar by the wall, chatting to patrons and overseeing what was going on. After his passing, the rest of the Committee bought a special plaque to go on the wall in ‘his corner’ to remember him and everything he did for them over the years.

I started streaming on Twitch in 2021 purely to do charity challenges, before it evolved into streaming regularly for fun, building a community, but still with charity at the very core of everything I did and do.

Every pay-out I get from Twitch from people subscribing and ‘throwing bits’, I put onto my fundraising page – I didn’t want to earn a single penny from streaming, I wanted everything to go to charity.

Since the start of 2023, I’ve done a number of different events and activities to help raise money – ranging from long distance walks, to snooker tournaments, a couple of solo 24hr livestreams on Twitch, and doing a 48hr stream relay with other streamers.

Please check out the current fundraising page below to see what I'm doing to raise money each year.