Pete Waterman targets ‘almost impossible’ brain cancer cure

His son deteriorated over several months in 2004, although at the time Pete did not know the cause.

He ended up in hospital and as his parents were speaking to doctors, who had said there was nothing more they could do for him, he choked on a sandwich.

He was put on life support but died early in January 2005.

“I don’t want anybody to go through what I had to go through,” Waterman said.

“A cure – that’s all we want.

“It’s easy to say, it’s almost bloody impossible to achieve – but we’ll say it anyway.”

He spoke to an expert in brain cancer and believes Paul likely had a glioblastoma tumour.

On Wednesday, he visited the Brain Tumour Research Centre of Excellence at the University of Nottingham, which is searching for a cure for this type of cancer.

“You can’t have a lab like this if you haven’t got funding,” he said. “And the more labs like this we’ve got, the more chance we’ve got of saving lives.”

Speaking shortly before the government announcement, he said state funding would help, but more joined-up work and leadership in the research field was also needed.

“Instead of this scattergun approach, we’ve got to have a bullet approach that says we have to cure this problem,” he said.