For far too many years breast cancer was a taboo subject. I’ve been told that many women were so frightened of the diagnosis they refused to visit their doctor, because they felt it was a death sentence.
Few people dared hope that one day effective treatments could be found. But in 1989 when Baroness Sally Oppenheim Barnes, whom I’d met when she was the consumer minister and I was presenting a consumer programme, rang me to invite me to a meeting with a brand-new charity, Breakthrough Breast Cancer, of course I accepted.
It was such a crucial cause. And I was not disappointed. The passion of that founding team was so impressive.
They explained they were going to fund research, to put a focus on this neglected, stigmatised cancer, and the skills of their dedicated scientists would surely find effective new treatments. So I signed up straight away.
One of the best-known woman journalists then, with an unmistakable voice impossible to ignore, was Jean Rook.
I suppose these days she would be called feisty. In those days she embraced the description she gave herself, with considerable pride, that she was “the biggest bitch in Fleet Street”.
I had in my time felt the rough edge of her tongue, as presenter of a high-profile television show I was a big target, and she scored a bull’s eye on me from time to time.
But we respected each other, two female journalists working hard to make women’s issues noticed in misogynist times. So when I heard that she had breast cancer, I rang her straight away.
Something I said during that conversation, something about the tone in my voice, she told me gave her hope. Personally I think her renewed determination was inspired by her own courage, not by anything I said.
But I was very glad to have spoken to her, and when I heard some time later that she had sadly passed away, I immediately contacted Breakthrough, and Sir Nick Lloyd, my friend who was the editor of the Express.
I suggested to them that I was sure Jean’s readers would want to remember her with a memorial fund, raising money to find the breakthrough solutions to defeat the disease that had cut her life short far too early. Nick at once agreed.
And as we had predicted the Express readers responded with their usual generosity donating to the Jean Rook Appeal he launched in her memory.
That was thirty years ago, and a great deal has changed since then. Breakthrough has joined with others to become the established, celebrated pioneering charity, Breast Cancer Now.
The funds raised by the Jean Rook Appeal have been used to help make crucial breakthroughs, such as the discovery of the BRCA2 gene which has been the foundation of important new treatments and ways to prevent breast cancer. And the work goes on.
Jean Rook once told me I had given her hope. The Jean Rook Appeal has given many thousands of other women hope. Jean would have been so proud.
– Dame Esther Rantzen is a presenter, campaigner and journalist
