Parachutes, wax and other stories

10:20am Wednesday 18th June 2008

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Crazy antics are happening all over the show as good people raise cash for good causes.
As the clock keeps ticking towards the Race for Life, I'm becoming increasingly aware of life's ordinary people doing extraordinary things to raise money for others.
The pages I piece together as a sub-editor each week feature people with big hearts achieving giant successes for often little recognition.
I'm constantly surprised by the time, effort, sweat, tears and dogged determination these people are putting in, all in the name of helping others.
Last week we featured Elstree's swimming sisters, Tayla and Dani Jacobson, who have raked in £22,000 for six charities by swimming the equivalent of the English Channel.
Over in Finchley, Bradley Cohen trekked 960km across Israel, beating dehydration and encountering a wolf, to raise £10,000 for children's charities.
And in Mill Hill, Mark Silverman has been climbing stairs and rounding up football stars to raise money for Action Duchenne, a charity he is a director of and became involved in when his little boy Thomas was diagnosed with Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy.
I've read about cancer survivors posing nude for calendars, people shaving their heads or waxing their entire bodies. A grandmother in Wales jumped out of a plane and an American school teacher ate a pile of bugs live on breakfast TV.
So although I'm not defying death by walking from England to New Zealand or diving into the North Sea for a polar swim, I am a wee cog in an increasingly big movement to raise money for cancer research.
And doing my bit is, I guess, what it's all about.
Leave a comment below if you or anyone you know has done something impressive for charity funds.