MPH 06 Classic

Stirling Moss gives his support to the Prostate Cancer Awareness Campaign

A new addition to the MPH 06 live stage show at London’s Earls Court this year was to host a large classic car display in the upper gallery and the MGOC took a stand amongst the prestige car clubs, dealers and auctioneer’s collections. The familiar old motor show setting was transformed for the MPH extravaganza, and the ground floor was laid out with an impressive array of very expensive exotic machinery much beloved by football players and media stars.

The Club stand at MPH 06 housed the MGOC Spares MGB V8, the 1965 Le Mans MGB, the XPower 500 (see page 30) and an MGF race car from the MGOC Race Championship Series. The race MGF on the stand was campaigned this year with great flair by Martin Wills who came close to winning. Martin’s MGF has provided a vital link to the Prostate Cancer Awareness Campaign (PCA) who have sponsored his car suitably decked out with their stickers and Tom Bowen’s Rally MG ZR this year. This gave us the opportunity to invite Gary Steele the co-ordinator of the PCA campaign to join us on the stand to further promote his cause. Gary was accompanied by fellow campaigner Winne Bond who raised funds for the PCA by performing a wing walk on the Utterly Butterly biplane in September.

The MGOC stand at MPH 06

Gary Steel is joined by Sir Stirling Moss

MG Rally Driver Tom Bowen also sponsored by Prostate Cancer Awareness chats to Sir Stirling

The ground floor at Earls Court littered with supercars, the matt finish Bentley was an extra £64,000 over list for the special paint finish and interior

Sir Stirling signs autographs

MG SV for sale at Bonhams

Joining Gary on the MGOC stand on Friday was motor racing legend Sir Stirling Moss who has lent his support to the campaign and had the courage to be associated with the condition and its treatment. Sir Stirling chatted to visitors, signed numerous autographs and was interviewed by a TV film crew covering the event.

Gary has just returned from the United States where he attended the American Conference on Prostate Cancer in Washington DC organised by the Foundation for Cancer Research and Education of America. It was here that Gary learned the Americans are about 20 years ahead of us in this field. It appears that they are winning the battle against prostate cancer while we are still losing. In the USA one in 33 men will die from prostate cancer but here in the UK the figure is one in three, not good, considering there were 248,628 men diagnosed in the States in 2005 and 33,206 in the UK. Gary firmly believes that the most important issue remains early diagnosis and he stressed that we men must press GPs and in fact all members of the medical profession, government and those concerned to allow men over 45 to have yearly testing for prostate cancer.

If men over 45 are regularly examined their chances of early diagnosis is greatly enhanced giving them the opportunity to understand their condition and be able discuss treatment and develop a strategy that will increase their chance of a successful outcome. Alas, there is no quick fix solution to the diagnosis of prostate cancer, presently we only have the Prostrate Specific Antigen or PSA test, but used intelligently when men first have the test it can provide initial response for further examination and after treatment it can be used to monitor effectiveness.