Faye Fantarrow: Singer preparing to travel to US to begin potentially life-saving brain tumour treatment
Up-and-coming singer Faye Fantarrow is set to travel to California in the New Year to begin a pioneering and potentially life-saving treatment for a brain tumour.
The 20-year-old musician, from Sunderland, was diagnosed with an aggressive glioma tumour in August – having already survived leukaemia twice during her childhood.
While Faye has undergone radiotherapy in the UK, there is no cure here, and family and friends have been fundraising to collect £450,000 to cover the cost of a type of immunotherapy called CAR T-cell therapy and associated treatment in America.
After being signed by Eurythmics star Dave Stewart to his label just a few months before her diagnosis, both he and his bandmate Annie Lennox donated and the fundraising pot now stands at more than £200,000.
It means Faye has enough to cover the initial costs and is due to fly out to have cells collected at the City of Hope hospital in Duarte, Los Angeles County, early in January. However, she needs to keep fundraising to cover the remaining costs for the full process.
She will spend two weeks in the US before flying back to the UK to perform a gig at the end of the month – her first since her diagnosis.
“I’m really looking forward to having the initial cell collection to get the ball rolling,” she told Sky News. “For me personally, having the gig planned brings a sense of normality that I’ve been seeking for a long time.
“I’m very optimistic, but it’s also overwhelming. I’m looking forward to [beginning the treatment process] but it’s daunting too as I’ve been having this conversation for so long now. My overriding emotion right now though is feeling grateful, because without the donations and all the support I’ve had, this initial stage wouldn’t have been attainable.”
Faye finished her radiotherapy in October and says her consultant is pleased with its progress so far in keeping the growth of her tumours at bay.
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What is CAR T-cell therapy?
The singer says the first stage of the US process in January will be to collect cells. After that, her tumours will be monitored in the UK before she returns to California for the full treatment.
CAR T-cell therapy is 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.
Faye is hoping the radiotherapy treatment will have done enough to keep her tumours from growing until she can raise the full amount needed.
After finishing the course, she says she is generally feeling better and has increased energy, although still has “days of ups and downs”. However, she now feels well enough to perform once again and is looking forward to getting on stage.
“This will be the first gig since all this happened,” she said. “I think I feel well enough in myself now, and the cell collection I’m hoping will not be too intrusive.
“I feel it’s important to get on stage and pay forward my gratitude. I’m playing it as a kind of promise – this is what’s to come, something to look forward to in terms of my career.”
‘I cannot express how much I believe in Faye’
Faye is signed to Dave Stewart’s Bay Street Records label
Faye has been writing songs since she was a teenager, taking up the guitar after having a bone marrow transplant following her second leukaemia diagnosis.
The glioma tumour is believed to be a rare consequence of her previous cancer treatment.
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 – and she signed to Stewart’s Bay Street Records the following year.
“Faye is a brilliant young artist, a singer-songwriter in a class of her own,” Stewart previously 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.”
The Faye Fantarrow & Friends gig will be held at The Fire Station in Sunderland on Friday 27 January. You can donate to the Fight For Faye fundraiser here.
It’s easy to see why Anora, the film currently creating a lot of awards buzz, is being described as a modern day Pretty Woman.
It tells the story of a young woman, a sex worker, who ends up falling in love with a very rich man; this time round, he’s the son of a Russian oligarch.
But the similarities end there. More than 30 years on from Richard Gere and Julia Roberts’ famous Hollywood ending, Anora takes the sugar-coating away from the realities of sex work.
Mikey Madison stars as Anora. Pic: Neon/Augusta Quirk
It is one of those rare films that has already impressed critics – taking the biggest prize at this year’s Cannes Film Festival and now leading the nominations at the Gotham Awards – but will also appeal to a wider audience looking for something fun and smart, too.
It is the latest story from writer-director Sean Baker, a filmmaker who often focuses on marginalised people and has covered sex work in several of his previous works, from a retired porn star in Red Rocket to a transgender sex worker in Tangerine, and a character who solicits sex work online in The Florida Project.
Anora took home the biggest prize at the Cannes Film Festival earlier this year. Pic: Neon
The theme was never intentional, he tells Sky News, but after discovering more about the industry he realised he wanted to tell these stories.
“I never imagined me making five films in a row focused on sex work,” he says. “It just happened to be that when I started doing research on the first one, I met sex workers, became friends with sex workers, and discovered that there were a million stories to be told in that world. And each one can be individual and very different, being that there’s so many aspects of sex work, so one led to the next.
“I don’t know if it will continue, I’m not sure, it has to happen organically though – I’d never want it to be a shtick of mine, you know, I want it to be something I’m inspired to do and there has to be a reason behind it.”
Pic: Neon
‘The sex work community is amazing’
Mikey Madison, who plays the lead character Anora – or Ani for short – is now tipped for best actress nominations come awards season next year.
She says she immersed herself in the world of her character when preparing for the role.
“I think that I went into the research not with much knowledge about sex work, and so I was able to learn a lot and educate myself in a way that I don’t know I would have if it weren’t for this film,” she says. “I’m so grateful to have that experience because the sex work community is amazing and I’ve made so many incredible friends.”
But that wasn’t the only prep Madison had to do. She’s listed in the credits as helping to choreograph her character’s dances, and she also had to learn Russian – though admits she’s out of practise again now.
“My Duolingo app has been bothering me trying to get me back into it. I think I just haven’t had a chance to practise any of it, but on the last handful of days of shooting, I was able to listen to pretty full conversations and understand what they were talking about. And at this point, I think it’s gone, but maybe I’ll be able to redevelop it.”
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When Anora competed at Cannes in May it won the Palme d’Or, the top prize for the best feature film.
Baker says the win was far more than just a tick off his bucket list.
“I think it was the bucket list! I mean, that was it,” he says. “It’s been incredible, it really has been, and I really didn’t expect it – we were just so happy to be in competition at Cannes, and next thing you know we’re at the awards ceremony, and next thing you know I’m up on stage and George Lucas is handing me the Palme d’Or.”
“So, yeah, it’s life changing.”
Anora is out in cinemas in the UK today
GB News has been fined £100,000 for breaking impartiality rules over a programme featuring Rishi Sunak, Ofcom has said.
It comes after the media watchdog announced in May that the show called People’s Forum: The Prime Minister had breached broadcasting guidelines.
The programme featured then prime minister Mr Sunak answering questions from a studio audience and a presenter.
GB News chief executive Angelos Frangopoulos said the fine was a “direct attack on free speech and journalism in the United Kingdom”.
“We believe these sanctions are unnecessary, unfair and unlawful,” he added.
The hour-long show, which aired on 12 February, prompted 547 complaints to Ofcom.
The regulator found earlier this year that while featuring Mr Sunak was fine in principle, “due weight” should have been given to an “appropriately wide range of significant views” other than the Conservatives.
Pic: PA
Ofcom said Mr Sunak “had a mostly uncontested platform to promote the policies and performance of his government in a period preceding a UK general election,” which it recorded as a breach of impartiality rules.
The watchdog said “given the seriousness and repeated nature of this breach,” it had imposed a £100,000 financial penalty.
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GB News was also directed to “broadcast a statement of our findings against it, on a date and in a form determined by us”.
The TV channel is challenging the breach decision by judicial review and Ofcom will not enforce the sanction decision until those proceedings are concluded.
Keep up with all the latest news from the UK and around the world by following Sky News
Mr Frangopoulos insisted the show featuring Mr Sunak “was an important piece of public interest programming”, and that “appropriate steps” were taken to ensure due impartiality.
He added: “It was designed to allow members of the public to put their own questions directly to leading politicians.
“GB News chooses to be regulated and we understand our obligations under the Code.
“But, equally, Ofcom is obliged by law to uphold freedom of expression and apply its rules fairly and lawfully.”
Ofcom previously found GB News violated due impartiality rules in March over five programmes that featured Tory MPs as presenters.
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