Team Mags is go

This is my friend Mags, and she's a bit special. 

She and I went to university together in Newcastle Upon Tyne in the early 1990s and, after losing contact for a while, met up again when I moved to London

We did manage to keep in touch after that, even after Vanessa dragged me up to Yorkshire, and we were delighted when Mags came to our wedding.

That was in 2005 and all was well in her world.

However, the following year, Mags was diagnosed with breast cancer.

Thankfully, she beat it with a minimum of fuss, dusted herself down and got back on with her life.

Then, last autumn, Mags was told she had leukaemia.

To cut a very long story short, Mags underwent three bouts of chemotherapy and in January, had a bone marrow transplant after being matched up with an anonymous donor via the Anthony Nolan Trust.

Against some serious odds, she's now positively bounding along the road to a full recovery.

When things were at their worst, I wanted to do something to help.  Being tested as a potential donor was ruled out as I wasn't a blood relative. 

So I had another idea; Wee John and I would team up to tackle the Great North Run and raise a bit of cash!

Sounds silly doesn't it?  And it was.  After all, John has spent the majority of his adult life smoking and drinking like a pissed up steam engine with an exercise phobia. 

But he agreed without hesitation, and we entered our names into the ballot.

Perhaps with fate on our side, we were both successful and chose Leukaemia and Lymphoma Research as our obvious charity of choice. 

We have done a little bit of training thus far but, with more than three months still to go, it's not quite panic stations yet.

However, do you know what would encourage us to put a bit more effort in?

That's right - the contents of your wallet.

You can donate to our joint appeal fund by clicking here and following the on-screen instructions.

You don't even have to do it straight away because, believe me, I will be giving you plenty of reminders between now and our big day on Sunday 18 September.

But please do give - and we promise to be really, really sore when we eventually flop across the finishing line.

By the way, we're not doing it dressed like this.