October 26, 2012 – On Friday 19 October stars from television, music and film came together for Stand Up To Cancer – a new fundraising collaboration between Cancer Research UK and Channel 4, raising an incredible £7,152,386 so far for research into cancer.
Friday’s live fundraising event was hosted by Davina McCall, Alan Carr and Dr Christian Jessen and featured celebrity interviews, moving real life stories and incredible dance battles. JLS pranked Olly Murs and Derren Brown persuaded Chris O’Dowd to ‘shoot’ his wife Dawn Porter in a game of paintball Russian Roulette with a twist. Leona Lewis was joined on stage in an emotional performance of ‘Run’ with The Big C Choir, all of whom have been affected by cancer.
- Over 400,000 donations were made on the night
- BT, who provided the expertise and telecommunications infrastructure for the all-important fundraising, confirmed a whopping 30,000 calls were taken on the night. BT also provided the online payment service MyDonate for Telethons and Appeals, which helped hundreds of call-centre volunteers across the country take over £700,000 in donations from the public
- The Stand Up To Cancer UK Facebook page now has over 393,000 ‘fans’,
- #standuptocancer trended all night on 19 October on Twitter, with over 265,000 tweets during the broadcast, C4’s most tweeted-about programme of that week
- Viewing figures over the four and a half hours of Stand Up To Cancer peaked at 2.3million, with an average of 1.7million viewers over the whole night
- Celebrities including Kylie Minogue, Heidi Klum, JLS and Little Mix, Chris O’Dowd and Dawn Porter tweeted about the campaign to their millions of followers on the night.
Joining Davina, Alan and Dr Christian for Stand Up To Cancer live were: Samuel L Jackson, Bradley Cooper, Leona Lewis, Cheryl Cole, Keith Lemon, Heidi Klum, Jeremy Piven, Heston Blumenthal, Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall, Alesha Dixon, Ashley Walters, Russell Tovey, Bear Grylls, Jack Whitehall, Tom Felton, Warwick Davis, Jimmy Carr, Derren Brown, Martin Freeman, Dawn Porter, Micky Flanagan, Stephen Graham, Max Beesley and Jonathan Ross.
Dr Harpal Kumar, CEO of Cancer Research UK, said: “Friday night was an amazing example of what we can do as a collective force in the fight against cancer. I’d like to thank every single person who contributed to Stand Up To Cancer. Your donations will fund groundbreaking research specifically designed to have an impact within just a few years, working to turn breakthroughs in the lab into breakthroughs in hospitals and help us to save more lives from this devastating disease.”
Lead sponsor of Stand Up To Cancer, Tesco, helped to mark the campaign coming to the UK for the first time on 19 October. The supermarket enlisted the help of Britain’s Got Talent stars Flawless to join Tesco staff and customers in smashing the Guinness World Record for “most people standing on one leg simultaneously”.
Over 300 of core sponsor ScottishPower’s employees gave up their time to man the phones throughout the live show to take pledges, along with 187 AXA and 850 Barclays employees. AXA also pledged to £10,000 for 10,000 re-tweets of their little big things message, which they then doubled to £20,000. TK Maxx, official merchandise partner, sold over 50,000 wristbands during the campaign. The wristbands are still available to buy in store.
Donations can still be made to Stand Up To Cancer until 30 November 2012, with more details available online. When all donations are in, Cancer Research UK will begin the process of assessing the research proposals received and the task of allocating the funds raised to new clinical trials which will help turn breakthroughs in the labs to breakthroughs in hospitals.
For more information about Stand Up To Cancer, visit standuptocancer.org.uk, facebook.com/standuptocancerUK / @StandUp2C
You can still donate to Stand Up To Cancer in the following ways:
PHONE open until 19 November 2012: Call 0300 123 4444
ONLINE open until 30 November 2012: Channel4.com/su2c or standuptocancer.org.uk
TEXT open until 30 November 2012: To give £5 or £10 text FIVE or TEN to 70404
+ 1 std rate message. UK residents 16+ only, please ask bill payer’s permission. Closes 30.11.12 Go to channel4.com/terms for T’s and C’s. Send NOINFO after your donation amount if you do not want to be contacted by CRUK in the future.
100% of your donation goes to the SU2C campaign administered by Cancer Research UK.
Whizz Kid Entertainment produced the main hub for Channel 4.
Tesco is proud to be the lead broadcast sponsor across Channel 4’s Stand Up To Cancer programme schedule.
For media enquiries, please contact:
For Channel4 related enquires please contact: Nikki Neate on 020 7306 5377 or nneate@channel4.co.uk
For Cancer Research UK please contact: Laura Peters on 020 3469 8367 or Laura.Peters@cancer.org.uk
Note to editors
Credit: Stand Up To Cancer is a joint national fundraising event from Channel 4 and Cancer Research UK. Standuptocancer.org.uk or channel4.co.uk/SU2C for further information.
SU2C USA
Since Stand Up To Cancer (SU2C) began in the USA in 2008 with a telecast across ABC, CBS and NBC, it has harnessed the support of the entertainment industry to raise more than $260 million for cancer research focused on bringing more effective treatments to patients quickly. SU2C is an Entertainment Industry Foundation initiative.
Funds raised through the Stand Up To Cancer campaign will go specifically towards the UK’s leading clinical research, ensuring that new treatments get to patients faster. UK-based researchers at hospitals, universities, charities and research institutes across the UK will be able to apply for grants from the Stand Up To Cancer fund through an open call for proposals. Reflecting the collaboration with the USA, 20 per cent of funds raised will support UK–US collaborative research to develop state-of-the-art new treatments to benefit patients here in the UK.