"After losing my best friend - the journalist John Merritt - to leukaemia in 1992 and later John's daughter Ellie to the same disease I want to make sure I am doing all I can to support Leukaemia Research."
About my charity activity
Alastair Campbell is chairman of fundraising for Leukaemia Research, and has personally raised well over seven figures for the charity through sport and other events. He chose the charity because his best friend, former Mirror colleague John Merritt, died of leukaemia in 1992. John’s daughter Ellie died from the same disease six years later, aged nine. When he took up running in 2002, he decided to do the 2003 London Marathon for the charity, whilst still working in Downing Street. He raised half a million pounds. He has since switched to triathlon and is now captain of the Leukaemia Research triathlon team, the biggest in the country. For several years he has presented the charity’s annual sports awards.
Now chairman of fundraising, his current challenge is to find 50 people and organisations to pay £50,000 to celebrate the charity’s fiftieth anniversary. Last year he made a short film for the BBC on the moving story of how – through one family’s determination to remember a little girl – the charity started, and has grown. Where once childhood leukaemia was a death sentence, now there is a 90 per cent chance of survival, in large part thanks to research funded by the charity.
Alastair is also involved in mental health charities but has always been clear that his main charitable commitment is and always will be Leukaemia Research. He recently did a charity event with fellow leukaemia campaigner, Australian cricketer Justin Langer, in Australia, and has been on Sir Ian Botham’s walks for the charity.