A LADS friendship group from Tavistock have decided to shave their heads in support of their friend who has recently been disgnosed with Non-Hodgkin lymphoma and to raise money for Cancer Research UK.

The nine young men: Joe Hilton, Hayden Greening, Oliver Gourd, Tom Barton, Ffin Williams, Scott Mckechnie, Cameron Palmer, Alex Rich and Mark Lewis who have been friends since meeting in both primary and secondary school, recently learned of their friend’s diagnosis and collectively decided they would stand in solidarity with him and fundraise for a cause associated with his diagnosis.

Joe Hilton, one of the group, said: ‘He first knew something was wrong when he started getting pains in his knee and other parts of his body. Playing football became more of a challenge for him too so he went to the physio as he wasn’t sure what was causing it, was referred for an MRI scan and then was informed he had a tumour in one of his bones. We decided as a group we had to do something together. We’re really close friends — we go on holidays together, attend festivals, watch football matches together. We were all out one night having a few drinks, one of us threw the idea out there about shaving our heads and we all decided to go with it and set up the fundraising initiative straight away.’

Ready to face the clippers with a 0.5 grade clip, the boys attended Ffin’s house on Tuesday evening after they finished work and sat down one by one to brave the headshave.

The lads have already raised well over £4,000, a figure which is continually rising, having initially set a target of £1,000 which they met and nearly doubled in less than 24 hours of the page being launched.

Joe said: ‘We were really surprised, we had no expectations. We just chose £1,000 as an arbitrary figure but were met with a big wave of donations as soon as we created the page. We shared it through Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp with friends, family and teammates from the sports we play and have had such a great response. We’re so thankful for everyone’s donations.’

Alison Birkett, senior relations officer for Cancer Research UK in the South West said: ‘We issue the boys’ friend our very best wishes from us at Cancer Research UK and we are pleased to hear he has such amazing lads supporting him by shaving their hair off. Best wishes to everyone involved and many thanks for showing such great initiative in doing this.’

If you would like to help the lads in their efforts to fundraise in support of their friend, visit their Just Giving page at: https://justgiving.com/fundraising/the-boys-go-cueball