Health charity champion Ada Haywood has raised more than £40,000 in her latest effort to support research to combat cancer and heart disease.
Representatives from 50 businesses, together with partners and friends, joined the former Steelite Pottery worker Ada at her Pink Tie Ball, held at the Double Tree by Hilton, Stoke-on-Trent.
Ada, from Clayton, Newcastle-under-Lyme has raised almost £1.5 million for Cancer Research UK and the British Heart Foundation over the past 20-years.
Her annual Pink Tie Ball, held each September, sells out within days of tickets being released, with almost half of tables for 2024 already sold.
Ada, aged 71, started her fundraising after a neighbour’s wife died from breast cancer at the age of 35.
She said: “I get tremendous support from the local business community at my Pink Tie Ball and events such as our annual VE Day pie and pea supper.
“One in two people will get cancer in their lifetime and it’s so important to support the scientists in their search for a cure.
“Around five years ago, I decided to also support the British Heart Foundation as around 460 people die in the UK each day from heart and circulatory diseases.
Ada’s amazing fundraising efforts were recognised in 2018 with the award of a British Empire Medal and she even has a room named after her at the headquarters of Cancer Research UK.
