BRIDPORT: Stand-up comedian Tom Glover is taking on a more serious role by joining forces with Cancer Research UK and Channel 4 to raise money for research which helped save his grandmother’s life.

Tom, 27, from Bridport, who has just returned from a successful stint at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, is hosting a show of his own in his home town in support of the campaign, Stand Up to Cancer.

Tom has a very personal reason for supporting Cancer Research UK.

His nan, Iris Gregory, 72, will celebrate being a 20 year cancer survivor this month. Iris, also from Bridport, was first diagnosed with breast cancer, aged 52.

Three years earlier, a thickness in her breast was dismissed as being hormonal. She didn’t believe anything was wrong when she was called back following a mammogram.

Iris, whose two aunts died from breast cancer, said: “I will never forget it. Twenty years ago being told you had cancer was like a death sentence. That is what you thought back then. I spent two days in my bedroom in tears.”

Iris had a mastectomy and when the cancer returned two years later she faced weeks of daily radiotherapy. She had regular check-ups for the next ten years but these days she attends for the routine mammogram offered to all women over 50.

Iris said: “You just have to hope and pray it doesn’t come back. But I am a positive person. The first couple of days after being diagnosed were hard but then I made up my mind I was going to fight it. I just told myself ‘you can do this’.”

Tom hopes others will support the campaign.