The character arc of Stephen Sutton

Who was Stephen Sutton?

Ten thousand was the goal. He passed three million.

He was a very active child in Burntwood: sports and athletics, long-distance running and football, a trial at Walsall and a school record in the under-15 400m. He had Lynch syndrome, a genetic predisposition to colorectal cancer, as his father Andy did. His father had part of his intestine removed after a diagnosis in 1989, had a second tumour removed twenty years later, and got the all-clear only months before his son was first diagnosed.

Getting that diagnosis took a long time. Doctors said constipation and prescribed laxatives, despite his father insisting there was a family risk, and he was repeatedly told teenagers were too young for the illness. He was fifteen when they found stage 3B colorectal cancer. In his final interview he admitted to a degree of anger about how long it took, and said he would not dwell on it.

He got top marks from Chase Terrace Technology College in August 2012 and had interviews at Cambridge to read medicine, and at Leicester and Leeds. In December 2012 the cancer was deemed incurable. He withdrew the applications before he had heard back. He did not ask how long he had, choosing instead to measure his life in the difference he could make rather than in time. At the O2 Arena in January 2014 he called his first diagnosis a good thing, a huge kick up the backside, something that taught him to take nothing for granted and gave him a lot of motivation for life.

He made a list of things to do and got through most of it: skydiving, a Guinness World Record, drumming in the opening ceremony of the 2013 Champions League final at Wembley with a knee so painful he needed crutches to walk to the stage, hugging an animal larger than himself, Download Festival, a last holiday in Ibiza with his friends. He started a blog, Stephen Story, in January 2013 and began raising money for the Teenage Cancer Trust with a goal of ten thousand pounds. The support was so far beyond what anyone expected that the goal went to a hundred thousand, then half a million, then a million, which was reached on 23 April 2014 while he was in hospital. Jimmy Carr, Jonathan Ross and Jason Manford backed the campaign, Manford giving a month of his comedy clubs turnover, and a nation took thumbs-up photographs.

His lung collapsed on 22 April 2014 and he died in his sleep at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham in the early hours of 14 May, aged nineteen. His brother Chris wrote that his life and what he achieved speaks for itself and does not need a rambling eulogy, and that he would still always be a bit of a tw*t to him, because he was his younger brother and it is in the contract, and that he had been blessed to grow up with the best little tw*t you could have. Around eleven thousand people came to the vigil at Lichfield Cathedral, wearing bright colours and yellow because he had asked them to. He was appointed MBE, dated the day he died. Of the money, 2.9 million went into specialist cancer units for young people at seven British hospitals, 1.2 million into fifty care scholarships at Coventry University, and 700,000 into awareness and helping patients get to the charity annual conference.

The moments

Stephen Sutton's timeline.

Stephen Sutton: frequently asked questions

What people ask about his line.

Sources

• Stephen Sutton, English Wikipedia biography, a Good Article.
• Stephen Story, his blog and Facebook page, and his JustGiving page.
• His speech at the O2 Arena, 24 January 2014, as quoted there.
• His brother Chris tribute, posted the day he died, as quoted there.
• The obituary in The Independent by Marcus Williamson.