The terminally ill woman who Peter Kay is returning to the stage to raise funds for has told of her immense gratitude for the comedian's support.
The Bolton funnyman announced on Twitter on Tuesday he will be performing two very special live Q&A’s in aid of Laura Nuttall at Manchester O2 Apollo on August 7 - and the comeback tickets sold out in under 30 minutes.
Laura was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer in autumn 2018 when she was just 18-years-old and doctors said she had 12 months left to live - as MirrorOnline reports.
READ MORE: Peter Kay announces return to live comedy for first time in three years
But Laura defied the odds - surviving almost two years longer than the initial prediction - and says she still has plenty of plans for the future.
She said: “I’m a person who likes to plan and when I got the diagnosis I felt a bit unmoored for a while.
“Then I thought: ‘Let’s just forget about the cancer.’ We’ll do what we need to do but carry on living your life like you would. You’ve just got to get on with it.”
Her inspirational outlook caught the attention of Peter Kay who is hoping to raise funds for potentially lifesaving immunotherapy treatment so those plans may come true.
The much-loved comedian used to work with Laura’s dad, Mark, and recognised him when he saw a BBC news segment about her story.
Laura said: “He rang my mum a month ago. He said he’d ring Manchester Apollo and see what slots they had free.
“Doing a concert for me, someone he loosely knows, part of me feels like I don’t deserve it. There are other people with worse cancers, who don’t have enough food to get by.”
Soon the family, including mum Nicola, 51, and sister Gracie, 19, were sitting round a table with the Phoenix Nights creator and seeing real hope for Laura’s future.
Laura's dad said: “He’s just a naturally funny guy, he sees funny things where you and I would not,”
“He always comes out with little quips. He did his usual faux pas of ordering food and said: ‘I am a bit hungry, have you got any garlic..’
“Everyone paused, the waitress was standing there. He has us in tears laughing. He was like: ‘Right, what are we going to do to raise money?’”
Laura is from Barrowford in Lancashire and had moved to London to attend King's College with dreams of one day joining the Royal Navy when she started suffering from severe headaches.
She said: “I was telling myself I was fine even though I wasn’t.
"My headaches were so bad I’d lose my vision.”
An initial eye test showed Laura’s optic nerve was swollen, but her condition soon worsened and further tests at hospital revealed she had eight brain tumours.
Laura said: “While my sister and mum were crying, I just wanted to sleep.
“I was so unwell I didn’t know what was going on.”
Laura had surgery to remove part of her skull at Salford Royal Hospital in November 2018 to target her largest tumour, after which she got her diagnosis of a glioblastoma multiforme - which is a cancer rare in young women.
Laura spoke of how her family were heartbroken by the news.
She said: “Everyone was crying, I tried to keep the family together.
“I had 50 stitches in my head, I was put on steroids so I gained weight. I lost my hair from radiotherapy.”
Laura targeted the seven other brain tumours with 30 gruelling sessions of radiotherapy and chemo - which ended in January last year.
Laura's mum 'made it her mission' to discover more treatments before they found one in Germany.
Laura said: “It is quite expensive but we went over to talk through the process and it made sense so we gave it a go.”
The Doing It For Laura charity was formed to fund the innovative immunotherapy treatment, with the family raising £150,000.
Despite the pandemic, Laura had the £22,000 treatment every four weeks - but doctors found another tumour in in March, which meant Laura faced another operation.
She said “It was revealed to be glioblastoma once more.
"That burst my bubble. But I recovered much quicker this time.”
A new fundraising drive for £80,000 was launched and Laura is now being treated in London and Germany.
She said: “I saw the doctor who gave me 18 months to live just after I’d passed my two-year marker and I told him I had no intention of proving him right.”
Mark 58, had faith his “determined” daughter would not give in and he is enormously grateful for Peter Kay's help.
Laura's Dad is a storyboard artist who met the comedian by chance at Granada TV in 2004 after a chat about his show Max and Paddy’s Road to Nowhere.
He explained: “He’d got an idea about Max and Paddy and said: ‘I need some graphics on this’. I worked on Max and Paddy and did a few more jobs for him.
“The morning after the BBC bulletin my phone rang and a familiar voice said: ‘How are ya?’ and it went from there. He’s a gentle, nice fella and if he can help he will.”
Laura is an ambassador for the Brain Tumour Charity.
Gina Almond, its director of fundraising, says: “Brain tumours remain the biggest cancer killer of children and adults under 40 in the UK. A cure can’t wait.”
Laura will attend both gigs with her family and said she can’t wait to hug Peter.
Mark spoke about how grateful he is for the support the family have received to raise funds for Laura.
He said: “If it wasn’t for Peter we’d be looking at selling the house.
“Not just Peter – so many people in the community doing fun runs. Little kids giving you their pocket money.”
Laura is now two years into a new degree and her treatment is going well. She has taken up running and ticked off dozens of items on her bucket list, like meeting Michelle Obama and going on safari.
She still wants to help to demolish a building. “I’d come up with ideas expecting they would be something I could do before I die but I started to get better,”
“I don’t want to end it. It kept me going when the cancer returned. I thought: ‘It’s alright because I’m going to operate a digger’.”
*Visit Laura's Go Fund Me here to help Laura and The Brain Tumour Charity's official website here for more information on how you can support
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