A Tameside woman who has been diagnosed with five different types of cancer in the past 35 years has thanked the doctors and researchers who have “given her hope”.
71-year-old Irene North was first diagnosed with breast cancer back in 1987, and has been under the care of The Christie in Manchester ever since.
The retired NHS phlebotomist – who has a daughter, two sons, and six grandchildren – said she was most worried about her family when she was first diagnosed, because her mum had died of cancer at the age of 41 when Irene was just six years old.
“Because mum died so young, it was always at the back of my mind that I might get cancer,” Irene admitted.
Over the past three and half decades, not only has Irene been diagnosed with breast cancer and secondary breast cancer, but she has also been treated for cervical cancer, skin cancer, and a routine scan in 2014 detected the very early stages of pancreatic cancer – which was successfully treated without her requiring major surgery.
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Following treatment during 1987 and 1988, Irene was declared cancer free.
Along with her husband Jack, Irene threw herself into fundraising for cancer-related causes, and also helped to set up the local Withington/Christie breast cancer care group.
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Now, Irene has decided to pay tribute to the doctors and researchers who have “given her hope” throughout her cancer journey, explaining: “When I first got cancer, I was terrified.
“I was told I needed to go to The Christie and back then, just the name of the hospital felt like a death sentence… [but] once I was through the door and started to talk to people, I realised that it wasn’t the place I or my family feared.
“The staff are so caring and compassionate, and their expertise is always plain to see.”
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Irene North was first diagnosed with breast cancer in 1987, and has been under the care of The Christie ever since / Credit: The Christie NHS Foundation Trust
Two of the doctors at The Christie that Irene has paid a special thank you to is father and son consultants, Tony and Sasha Howell.
“Tony and I became friends, and he supported the [Withington/Christie breast cancer care group] frequently,” said Irene. “He came along to talk to us as cancer patients about the challenges and developments of breast cancer treatments [and] over the years, I got to know most of the breast care team at The Christie and many of them joined us to share their expertise with the group.”
She continued: “In 2008, I walked through the door into a consulting room with my daughter Tracy and was surprised to see a spitting image of Tony Howell. It was surreal. Sacha explained that Tony was his dad.
“They are both very similar in how they treat patients. They both really listen to what you have to say, and I always felt like they had my best interests at heart.”
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Irene admits that coping with cancer is “hard” and living with it for 35 years has been tough, but she says she feels “very lucky” that many of the cancer treatments she has been given over the years have worked for longer than anticipated.
“The doctors have helped me maintain hope [and] that’s why the work The Christie does to discover new treatments is so important for patients like me,” said Irene.
Irene has also benefited from having some of her care delivered at home via The Christie outreach team.
“A lot of my treatment can be given by The Christie staff in local health facilities or even in the comfort of my own home with the nurses coming to me [and] that has made a huge difference to me, particularly during the pandemic and I’m very grateful.
“This team is another example of the wonderful work The Christie does.”
Featured Image – The Christie
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Bernardo Silva shares hilarious X-rated clash with John Stones before they were teammates
Danny Jones
This long weekend not only saw Man City manager and sporting legend Pep Guardiola bid goodbye to the club after a decade, but so did John Stones and Bernardo Silva, and the latter shared a hilarious story about an encounter before their bromance in blue.
Can’t lie, this one nearly made us spit out our tea when we first watched it…
Following the trio’s respective final games, this late May bank holiday Monday saw yet another City parade pass through Manchester, and as the party continued over at the Etihad Campus and Co-op Live for the afterparty, the boys got up on stage to say some parting words.
In Silva’s case, he chose to share, rather fittingly, some very choice words indeed, as he talked about his time playing against Stones when he was still in France.
From ‘little soft c**t’ to brothers lifting trebles together… football heritage.
Safe to say no one was expecting that particular expletive to come out of his mouth – we reckon not even most of the squad themselves.
During the Yorkshireman‘s first season at Manchester City, he came up against the creative midfielder in the Champions League when he was still playing at Ligue 1 side AS Monaco.
As you can see in the clip above, while it wasn’t the friendliest of exchanges back then, they soon buried the hatchet and chalked it off as nothing more than football.
Both fierce competitors in their own right, they look to be plenty soft with each other off the pitch ever since they became teammates.
So much so, in fact, that the duo ended up being the face of a pop-up Man City pub earlier this month, recreating the famous photo of the Gallagher brothers wearing the 1993/94 kits.
Credit: Manchester City FC (publicity pictures)
It’s plain to see in the clip how much love there is between the two, all these years later, and the story itself got a rapturous reaction from their peers and the crowd alike.
Silva has plenty of fans across Europe, both as a player and purely as a character; you only have to look at how Jack Grealish often reiterates his love for the Portuguese playmaker as a person and Premier League character, or even how pundits aligned with rival clubs like Gary Neville waxes lyrical about him.
And then we come to Pep himself.
Guardiola was rightfully given a fantastic guard of honour at the stadium itself on Sunday, with his speech making for an emotional moment for all those in the stands and watching at home, and City supporters at the parade made sure to give him a proper send-off.
Featured Images — Manchester City FC/CITY+ (screenshot via YouTube)
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66% of Brits consider Manchester to be the second city not Birmingham
Emily Sergeant
A new survey has revealed that more than half of Brits now consider Manchester to be the second city, rather than Birmingham.
At this point, the debate over where should hold the unofficial title of ‘Britain’s second city’ has raged for almost as long as London has been the capital… but now, in a bid to get to the bottom of the issue, a new YouGov study of more than 55,000 Brits investigates which urban areas the public feel have the strongest claim to holding the title.
Overall, it was revealed that 66% of Brits believe Manchester has a ‘strong case’ for being considered Britain’s second city, compared to 48% for Birmingham, and 49% for Edinburgh
When picking the city they most consider to be Britain’s second city, the public are, however, divided as 34% say it’s Manchester while 30% opt for Birmingham.
66% of Brits consider Manchester to be the second city not Birmingham / Credit: Chris Curry | Josh Taylor (via Unsplash)
As you can probably imagine, the answer to this age-old question varies significantly depending on where you are in the country.
Belief that Birmingham is Britain’s second city is concentrated in and around the West Midlands, whereas Manchester’s claim likewise finds its strongest support on its home patch (77% in Greater Manchester), though this does not extend to every part of the North West, with the people of Merseyside being more likely to consider Liverpool (34%) the second city than Manchester (27%).
Perhaps key to explaining why having a population roughly twice the size of Manchester’s doesn’t immediately settle the 'second city' debate in Birmingham’s favour is that just 14% of Britons consider population size to be the most important factor in determining a second city… pic.twitter.com/ThtAgJSKqq
Despite all this though, Manchester being considered the second city is the most common view across a ‘reasonably wide’ spread of England, YouGov found.
Beyond geographical differences, there’s also seen to be a small generational divide over the title too.
Among younger Brits, Manchester is the clear favourite, with 42% of 18-24 year olds seeing it as Britain’s second city, while Birmingham edges out Manchester for the silver city medal among over-65s by a margin of 35% to 29%.
Emily Sergeant -
2nd August 2022 
