When the fatigue set in and the sensation in parts of her left side started flickering away, Faye Fantarrow thought she knew what was coming. At 20, the leukaemia she had survived twice as a child had returned for a third time, she feared.
“Just” the leukaemia, she says, knowing cancer is never a “just”. But having survived it twice before, at least she knew what to expect. Or thought she did.
Blood tests, however, came back normal, she says. No leukaemia. It was not until she had scans and eventually a biopsy that doctors were able to give her a diagnosis: an aggressive glioma brain tumour, believed to be an incredibly rare consequence of previous radiotherapy she had undergone as a teenager.
This was back in August. Since then Faye, from Sunderland, has had further radiotherapy to try and shrink several growths. But there is no cure in the UK.
An up-and-coming singer and musician, spotted on social media and subsequently signed by Eurythmics star Dave Stewart earlier in 2022, she was made aware of a lifeline – a trial at the City of Hope hospital in the city of Duarte in Los Angeles County, California; a complex treatment, at a total cost of £450,000.
Now, her friends and family, as well as other musicians, are doing everything possible to try to raise the money. Three-and-a-half weeks since a fundraising page was set up, donations have reached just over £121,000. A huge amount, but there is still a way to go.
“We cannot let Faye’s life end here,” her sister Abigail says on the fundraising webpage. “She is the brightest star you could ever find on the darkest night, she is strong, independent and talented… please donate… please help to help Faye fight.”
“It’s daunting but the security blanket I have around me because of the people who are putting money in and just not giving up on me – it doesn’t seem as daunting,” says Faye.
The fight is now on to raise the money for treatment in California.
Surviving leukaemia
Faye was just eight when she was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukaemia, a form of blood cancer, for the first time. She underwent two-and-a-half years of chemotherapy that took away her hair and mobility, but as a child, she says a lack of proper awareness cushioned her from the situation, making her illness in some ways harder for her family.
And in a strange way, her cancer led to her life changing in a positive way; given a Brave Heart award for children facing illness or adversity, she chose an acoustic guitar, paving the way for her career as a singer-songwriter.
The leukaemia returned when she was 13 and this time, she would have to have a bone marrow transplant – a long, difficult process, but one she came through once again.
‘And then Mr Dave Stewart got in touch…’
Image: Faye signed to Dave Stewart’s Bay Street Records label earlier in 2022
Aged 15, Faye started playing the guitar seriously and began writing her own songs the following year. Aged 17, her music was played by BBC Introducing for the first time. And in 2021, she was named the winner of the Alan Hull award for songwriting – a prize given annually in the North East in memory of the Lindisfarne founder.
After years of cancer dominating her life, Faye was well and her music career was taking off. “And then Mr Dave Stewart got in touch,” she says.
Having first followed her on Instagram, Stewart later messaged the singer and began mentoring her, at first adding some production work to her demos remotely, then inviting her to record with him in London. Then they went to the Bahamas to record an EP.
“Things were going so well… and then I decided to mess everything up,” Faye jokes, referring to the tumour. But this is the hardest thing about being diagnosed now, she says. “I’m more aware of it now and obviously it’s affected my career as well. I don’t want this to undermine my career and everything I’ve worked to build.”
‘She’s a national treasure already’
Image: Stewart and his Eurythmics bandmate Annie Lennox have both donated: Pic: AP/Chris Pizzello
Stewart, also from Sunderland, has shared Faye’s story, calling her “an amazing young artist”. He has donated £50,000, and his Eurythmics bandmate Annie Lennox has also donated £10,000.
“Faye is a brilliant young artist, a singer-songwriter in a class of her own,” Stewart told Sky News. “Unique writers like Faye come few and far between and I knew the minute I heard her voice she was extraordinary.
“We spent an amazing time together recording her new EP this summer only to be hit with this devastating news no more than a few weeks after we finished recording.
“I cannot express enough how much I believe in Faye and her talents as a singer and performer, but it’s her astute observations of the world around her put in the words that makes me believe she deserves to be heard for a long, long time.
“At only 20 years old she’s a national treasure in my mind already and hopefully she will become one in yours, too.”
‘I can look towards a future’
Faye now suffers from seizures as a result of her tumours. She says she has good days and bad days. But she remains upbeat, saying she feels “euphoric” thinking about performing again following treatment in California; she is not thinking of it as a case of if, but when.
The treatment she needs is called CAR T-cell therapy, which is a type of immunotherapy – a “complex and specialist treatment”, according to Cancer Research UK. T cells are a type of white blood cell.
“With this treatment, a specialist collects and makes a small change to your T cells. After a few weeks, you have a drip containing these cells back into your bloodstream. The CAR T-cells then recognise and attack the cancer cells,” the charity says on its website.
“It is available as a possible treatment for some children with leukaemia and some adults with lymphoma. People with other types of cancer might have it as part of a clinical trial.”
Faye says the NHS has been “amazing” so far, but now she needs to get to the US.
“If anybody can give whatever they can, I’m eternally grateful for that,” she says. “I’m aware of the current climate… so even if it’s just sharing the story, talking about it. I’m fortunate enough that I have this option and people are getting behind me, that I can look towards a future. Even if it’s just talking about it, I can’t express the gratitude for that alone.”
But Faye’s mum puts it simply. “£450,000 seemed an insurmountable amount. But then I thought, well, if we can reach 450,000 people and they all just give a pound, then we can do it. And that’s all we ask. If someone can give a pound, then we can do it.”
The actor who played PC Reg Hollis in hit TV series The Bill has been praised by officers after helping them arrest a shoplifter.
Jeff Stewart stepped in when a thief attempted to escape on a bicycle in Southampton on Wednesday.
In a statement, a Hampshire Constabulary spokesman said: “The thief, 29-year-old Mohamed Diallo, fell off the bike during his attempts to flee, before officers pounced to make their arrest.
“To their surprise, local TV legend Jeff Stewart, who played PC Hollis for 24 years in The Bill, came to their aid by sitting on the suspect’s legs while officers put him in cuffs.
Image: (L-R) Jeff Stewart, Roberta Taylor, Mark Wingett, Trudie Goodwin and Cyril Nri celebrating The Bill’s 21st anniversary in 2004. Pic: PA
“In policing you should always expect the unexpected, but this really wasn’t on The Bill for this week.”
The Bill was broadcast on ITV between 1984 and 2010 and featured the fictional lives of police officers from the Sun Hill police station in east London.
Mr Stewart, who was among the original cast, appeared in more than 1,000 episodes as PC Hollis.
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Image: Police released footage showing their pursuit of a shoplifter in Southampton. Pic: Hampshire Constabulary
Image: As the suspect falls to the floor, PC Hollis (aka Jeff Stewart) sits on his legs. Pic: Hampshire Constabulary
In praising Mr Stewart’s actions, the force said: “Long since retired from Sun Hill station – but he’s still got it.”
Police from the Bargate Neighbourhoods Policing Team were alerted by staff at a Co-op store in Ocean Way to a suspected shoplifter on Wednesday.
Mohamed Diallo, 29, of Anglesea Road, Southampton, was subsequently charged with five offences of theft relating to coffee, alcohol and food from the Co-op and two other Sainsbury’s stores on three dates in April and July.
He pleaded guilty at Southampton Magistrates’ Court on Thursday and was bailed to be sentenced on August 29.
You walk into the cinema and he’s on most of the film posters there: Fantastic Four: First Steps, Eddington, The Materialists and The Uninvited.
With that level of public attention, you wouldn’t be shocked to see the actor become closed off.
Shielded by a sea of publicists maintaining a studio’s desired image and an influx of influencers replacing film reporters, public figures speaking their mind in Hollywood have become somewhat of a rarity.
Perhaps this is why the delayed yet meteoric rise to fame for Pedro Pascal feels refreshing for his fans.
Image: Pic: Disney
In between self-promotion for his latest projects, the Chilean-American uses his fame to highlight causes he cares about by wearing “Protect The Dolls” T-shirts in public settings, posting about food blockades into Gaza and linking non-profit organisations, Doctors Without Borders and The Trevor Project, on his Instagram account where he has over 11 million followers.
In a time where a single sentence can be taken out of context in a TikTok post or altered to suit a narrative driven by a headline (and yes, the irony of writing this does not go unnoticed), speaking candidly can feel like you’re walking into a trap.
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“I think it’s very easy to get scared no matter what you sort of talk about,” the actor tells Sky News.
“There’s so many different ways that things can get kind of fractured and have a life of itself really.”
He adds: “It’s sort of a business part of the way media can work really. There’s one thing that you can say and no matter what your intention behind it, it is absolutely lost in all of these different headlines, I suppose, but I’ll never shut up.”
Image: Pedro Pascal arrives at the premiere of “The Fantastic Four: First Steps” in Los Angeles earlier this week. Pic: AP
It’s the last line, “I’ll never shut up”, that echoes after our four minute and two second conversation in the midst of a days-long “press run” in London for the release of The Fantastic Four: First Steps.
The 50-year-old knows one misstep in an increasingly reactive media industry can shatter the careers of many. Pascal is aware of the dangers but uses his voice anyway.
It’s that decision that makes him “fantastic”, maybe more so than his role as Dr Richard Reeds in The Fantastic Four: First Steps – a character quite literally weighed down with the worries of the world on his shoulders whilst simultaneously welcoming new life with his wife Sue Storm.
The film, directed by WandaVision’s Matt Shakman, stands alone in its own universe within the MCU and also features Vanessa Kirby, Ebon Moss Bachrach and Joseph Quinn.
The Fantastic Four: First Steps is in cinemas now.
It was a cold, typically rainy Manchester evening, October 1993, when Michael Spencer Jones set out to meet a new guitar band he had been commissioned to photograph.
The weather was miserable, he didn’t know their music, wasn’t totally in the mood. “I had to drag myself from home, thinking: is it going to be worth the trouble?”
On the drive to the Out Of The Blue studio in Ancoats, on the outskirts of the city centre, a song he’d never heard before came on the local radio station. “It was like, wow, what is that?” The track was Columbia, by Oasis, the band he was on his way to meet.
Spencer Jones had previously met Noel Gallagher during the musician’s time as a roadie for fellow Manchester band Inspiral Carpets. But not Liam.
“As a photographer, obviously, the aesthetic of a band is massively important,” he says as he recalls that first shoot. “I’m just looking down the camera lens with a certain amount of disbelief.”
In front of him was a 21-year-old, months before the start of the fame rollercoaster that lay ahead. And yet. “I was looking at a face that just seemed to embody the quality of stardom.”
It was the start of a partnership that continued throughout the band’s heyday, with Spencer Jones shooting the covers for their first three albums, their most successful records, and the singles that went with them.
“You work with bands pre-fame and there’s always that question: are they going to make it? With Oasis there was never that question. Their success was inevitable.”
There was a confidence, even in those early days. “Incredible, intoxicating confidence. [They were] not interested in any kind of social norms or social constraints.”
It wasn’t arrogance, he says, of a criticism sometimes levelled at the Gallaghers. “They just had this enormous self-belief.”
Spencer Jones was one of several photographers who followed the band, capturing the moments that became part of rock history.
Jill Furmanovsky, who started working with Oasis towards the end of 1994, a few months after the release of debut album Definitely Maybe, says Noel always seemed aware their time together should be documented.
“An uncanny intuition, really, that it was important,” she says. “I think Noel has been aware right from the start, because for him that’s what he used to look at when he used to buy his Smiths records or Leo Sayer or whatever, he would stare at the covers and be fascinated by the pictures.”
Contrary to popular belief, Furmanovsky says the brothers got on fairly well most of the time, “otherwise they wouldn’t have been able to function”.
She picks one shoot in 1997, around the release of their third album, Be Here Now, as one of the more memorable ones. Noel had shared his thoughts about the band on a chalkboard and “they were having such a laugh.”
But when things did erupt, it became significant. “There were tensions in some shoots but they never started hitting each other in front of me or anything like that. I used to complain about it, actually – ‘don’t leave me out of those pictures where you’re really arguing!’.”
In Paris in 1995, tensions had boiled over. “It’s one of my favourites,” she says of the shoot. “It reflects not just the band but the family situation, these brothers in a strop with each other.”
What is notable, she says, is that they were happy for photographers to take candid shots, not just set up pictures to show them “looking cool”. Pictures that on the surface might sound mundane, showing “what they were really like – tensions, mucking about, sometimes yawning… This was the genius of Noel and [former Oasis press officer] Johnny Hopkins.”
Furmanovsky also notes the women who worked behind the scenes for Oasis – unusual at a time when the industry was even more male-dominated than it is now – and how they kept them in line.
“They got on well working with women,” she says. “Maggie Mouzakitis was their tour manager for ages and was so young, but she ruled. For a band one could say were a bunch of macho Manchester blokes, they had a lot of women working in senior positions.”
This is down to the influence of their mum, Peggy, she adds. “Absolutely crucial.”
Furmanovsky has been working with Noel on an upcoming book documenting her time with the band, and says she initially wanted to start with a picture of the Gallagher matriarch. “Noel said to me, ‘Jill, you do know she wasn’t actually in the band?'”
Touring with Oasis – ‘the journalist had to take a week off’
Kevin Cummins was commissioned to take pictures when Oasis signed to Creation Records, and it “kind of spiralled out of control a little bit”, he laughs.
“I photographed them for NME, gave them their first cover. I photographed them in Man City shirts because we were all Man City fans, and City were at the time sponsored by a Japanese electronics company, Brother. It seemed a perfect fit.”
The early days documenting the band were “fairly riotous”, he says. “They were quite young, they were obviously enjoying being in the limelight.
“I remember we went on tour with them for three days for an NME ‘on the road’ piece, and the journalist who came with me had to take a week off afterwards.
“I dipped in and out of tours occasionally – I’ve always done that with musicians because I cannot imagine spending more than about seven or eight days on tour with somebody, it would drive you nuts. They’re so hedonistic, especially in the early days. It’s very, very difficult to keep up.”
Cummins says the relationship between Noel and Liam was “like anybody’s relationship, if you’ve got a younger brother – he’d get on your nerves.”
During the shoot for the City shirt pictures, he says, “Liam kicked a ball at Noel, Noel pushed him, Liam pushed him back. They have a bit of a pushing match and then they stop and they get on with it.”
Another time, following a show in Portsmouth, “as soon as we got [to the hotel] after the gig, Liam threw all the plastic furniture in the pool. Noel looked at him and said, ‘where are we going to sit?’ And he made him get in the pool and get all the furniture out. So there were like attempts at being rock and roll, and not quite getting it right sometimes.”
Cummins says he has “very affectionate” memories of working with Oasis. “I’ve got a lot of very sensitive looking pictures of Liam and people are really surprised when they see them,” he says. “But he is a very sensitive lad… it’s just he was irritating because he was younger and he wanted to make himself heard.”
All three photographers have yet to see the reunion show, but all have tickets. All say the announcement last summer came as a surprise.
“There was an inkling of it, I suppose, just in the thawing of the comments between the brothers, but I still wouldn’t have guessed it,” says Furmanovsky, who has a book out later this year, and whose pictures feature in the programme. “It’s wonderful they have pulled it off with such conviction and passion.”
Cummins’ work can be seen in a free outdoor exhibition at Wembley Park, which fans will be able to see throughout the summer until the final gigs there in September.
“I think the atmosphere at the gigs seems to have been really friendly… I like the idea that people are taking their kids and they’re passing the baton on a little bit,” he says. “Everyone’s just having a blast and it’s like the event of the summer – definitely something we need at the moment.”
Spencer Jones, who released his second Oasis book, Definitely Maybe – A View From Within, for the album’s 30th anniversary last year – adds: “They really seem to be capturing a new generation of fans and I don’t think a band has ever done that [to this extent] before. Bands from 20, 30 years ago normally just take their traditional fanbase with them.”
But he says his first thought when the reunion was announced was for the Gallaghers’ mum, Peggy. “I think for any parent, to have two children who don’t talk is pretty tough,” he says. “It’s that notion of reconciliation – if they can do it, anyone can do it.
“The fact they’re walking on stage, hands clasped together, there’s a huge amount of symbolism there that transcends Oasis and music. Especially in a fractured society, that unity is inspiring. Everyone’s had a bit of a rough time since COVID, battle weary with life itself. I think people generally are just gagging to have some fun.”
Brothers: Liam And Noel Through The Lens Of Kevin Cummins is on at Wembley Park until 30 September. Definitely Maybe – A View From Within, by Michael Spencer Jones, available through Spellbound Galleries, is out now. Oasis: Trying To Find A Way Out Of Nowhere, by Jill Furmanovsky and edited by Noel Gallagher, published by Thames & Hudson, is out from 23 September.