Stephen Sutton's £1million bid
A teenager from Staffordshire with terminal cancer, who set himself a list of challenges to do before he dies, has announced a fresh goal to raise £1 million for charity.
Stephen Sutton, aged 19, of Burntwood, initially set out to raise £10,000 for the Teenage Cancer Trust, but that target has been smashed, with the total now standing at more than £572,000.
Now he is going all out to help boost that figure to £1m.
Stephen embarked on the fundraising drive and his list of challenges after he received his devastating diagnosis in 2012.
He has now achieved all but 11 things on his wish list, including meeting comedian Jimmy Carr, who came to see him at the trust's ward at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham after a staff member emailed him about Stephen's wish list.
He now has a tattoo of a pair of scissors – a nod to the operations he has had; he has gone crowd-surfing in a rubber dinghy, and has watched a football match at Wembley where he met Arsenal star Theo Walcott. Stephen has lost the use of one leg due to his illness, but he is determined to complete his list, including the next challenge of getting into the Guinness Book of Records in a group tandem skydive planned for July. The challenge has also given him opportunities to address business and charity seminars where he has encouraged delegates to use their time on earth wisely. Stephen, a former Chase Terrace Technology College pupil, said: "I've always said I don't want to know how long I've got. That's because life shouldn't be measured by time, it should be measured by what by what you achieve. I don't regret anything I did, I only regret the things I didn't do."
