In December 1986, Eddie O’Gorman’s youngest child, Paul, was diagnosed with leukaemia aged 14. It advanced rapidly and he died two months later. At the same time, O’Gorman’s daughter Jean, who was in her late 20s, was suffering with aggressive breast cancer.
These events changed the direction of O’Gorman’s life. In 1987, the self-made businessman, who has died aged 90, sold his business interests and spent the rest of his life helping children with cancer. He founded Children with Cancer UK, which became Britain’s leading sponsor of research into childhood cancers, and he remained in charge until three years before he died.
During O’Gorman’s lifetime the charity raised more than £300m and supported around 300 research projects, which have had a huge impact. Today, around 85% of children survive their cancer for five years or more after diagnosis, compared with around 64% in the 1980s.
In the aftermath of Paul’s death, O’Gorman wanted to raise £100,000 in his memory for a charity that at the time was called the Leukaemia Research Fund (now Blood Cancer UK). He and his wife, Marion, organised a ball at the Grosvenor House hotel in London and invited all his business contacts. It took place in October 1987 and 1,500 people came, including Jean, who by this time was extremely frail and in a wheelchair. O’Gorman achieved his goal, but it was bittersweet as Jean died a few days later, aged 29.
Newspaper coverage of the ball and the O’Gormans’ story was spotted by the then Princess of Wales’ team and Diana asked to meet them. At that point, O’Gorman and his wife were only thinking of fundraising for other people’s charities, but Diana encouraged them to go further and create their own charity. In January 1988 the O’Gormans launched the Children with Leukaemia charity and Diana planted a tree in memory of Paul. As the charity grew and supported a wide range of cancers, its name was changed in 2011 to Children with Cancer UK.
In the beginning O’Gorman rented an attic on Battersea Park Road in south London as the charity’s office. Helped part-time by his eldest son, Cliff, he set about raising money. He had no charity fundraising background, but his quiet, understated manner and compelling story moved people. He contacted celebrities including Terry Wogan, Paul McCartney, Steve Redgrave and Ronnie Corbett, and found they were happy to endorse his fundraising.
One strategy was postal appeals. The charity would send out thousands of letters, with a celebrity foreword, asking for money. Another initiative, inspired by O’Gorman’s childhood memory of paying for a signed photo of the Hollywood star Richard Widmark, was to sell signed photographs of celebrities such as Frank Bruno and Michael Caine for £50 each to pubs, cafes and hair salons all over Britain. He would say, “There’s no taste in nothing”, believing that people were more likely to donate if they got something in return.
The charity grew every year and by 1998 was raising £4m annually and had a team of staff housed in offices opposite Great Ormond Street hospital in London, where in 1995 it had opened its first childhood leukaemia research centre. O’Gorman said his strategy was to tackle the Big C (cancer) by funding research into the three little c’s (cause, cure and care).
A particular concern was that three-quarters of children who survive cancer will have long-term issues caused by chemotherapy and other treatments, including infertility, growth problems and heart issues. The big battle was to make cancer treatment less toxic and more precise. O’Gorman was particularly proud of funding the UKALL trial in 2003, which measured “minimal residual disease” in children with leukaemia. If you can pinpoint how much leukaemia is present in a child’s blood, you can tailor treatment, giving the lowest dose of chemotherapy necessary.
From 2008, Children with Cancer UK also became a major funder, along with Cancer Research UK, of the Stratified Medicine Paediatrics programme at the Institute of Cancer Research, which is advancing precision medicine for children whose cancers have returned.
O’Gorman’s long-term support of paediatric cancer research, which included funding oncology fellowships, was particularly valued by the scientific community due to the low level of state funding in the UK. While the comparable Zero Childhood Cancer scientific programme in Australia has been allocated A$150m (£73m) of taxpayers’ money over five years from 2024-25, for example, in the UK the Stratified Medicine Paediatrics’ programme relies on charities.
Born in Kentish Town, north-west London, to Ted O’Gorman, a librarian, and his wife, Violet, Eddie was the youngest of three, with an older brother, Terry, and sister, Anne. During the second world war he was evacuated to Wales, and upon return attended the William Ellis school in Highgate. He was very bright and got 11 O-levels, but the need to earn a living meant he left school at 16 and got an accounting job.
When he was 19, he met Marion Baillie, who worked for a printing company. They married a year later, in 1955, and had five children: Cliff, Sandra, Jean, Mark and Paul. Their first home was in a flat in Johnson Street, Kentish Town, made famous by Charles Dickens as the home of the Micawbers in David Copperfield. The conditions were still fairly Dickensian, and when Cliff was bitten by a rat as a toddler, the council rehoused the family in Mornington Crescent.
O’Gorman rose to become the director of several textile import companies, including Texmore Trading. As he became more prosperous, the family moved to Wembley and then to Hyver Hill in north London. He had a comfortable life, including holidays in Florida, playing golf and supporting Arsenal football team. However, after the deaths of Paul and Jean, his focus was on running the cancer charity.
O’Gorman was aware of the bigger picture in children’s cancer funding. He kept in touch with other CEOs, and if he could see another children’s cancer charity struggling, he would direct Children with Cancer UK to support them. During the Covid-19 pandemic, for example, the Teenage Cancer Trust received more than £1m from Children with Cancer UK. In the same way, he supported the charity Young Lives vs Cancer who fund “home from homes”, which are free places for families to stay while their child is having cancer treatment. Money from Children with Cancer UK also underpins the Beads of Courage programme, which gives a child a coloured bead every time they have a procedure.
In 2008, Marion died from motor neurone disease. When O’Gorman was made OBE two years later he was troubled that she was not there to share the experience, and he buried his medal in her grave. In 2018 he received the Pride of Britain lifetime achievement award. By 2021 his health was beginning to deteriorate and he had a stroke, so stepped down from the board of trustees.
He is survived by Cliff, Sandra and Mark, nine grandchildren and 15 great-grandchildren.
• Edward James O’Gorman, businessman and charity director, born 22 February 1935; died 19 March 2025
