What is the history of Red Trouser Day

Our founder Paul Finch was diagnosed with stage 4 colorectal cancer with probable secondary to lung in Jan 2014. As a result of his treatment at the Royal Marsden, he overturned a 10% chance of making it 5 years to a full recovery without major life changing bowel surgery with thanks to the expertise of the teams at the Royal Marsden. He has established Red Trouser Day to fund research in this very challenging and quite often taboo field. His story is often cited as an inspiration for others, in particular how it is possible to take on one of life’s major challenges in the face of tremendous adversity and remain positive throughout. He had several runs of chemotherapy, 6 weeks of radiotherapy, a major lung operation and within 12 weeks of the end, despite numb feet, promptly walked up Ben Nevis in the snow with his two sons. All possible as a result of the expertise of the Royal Marsden.

Paul wanted to create a community of people who have been touched directly or indirectly with any form of colorectal (bowel) cancer who wanted to give back and help others. The focus is on fund raising to support awareness and funds to support prevention and earlier diagnosis research.

Since it’s formation, the Red Trouser Day community has touched thousands of people providing hope, inspiration and guidance for their own individual journeys. Many people have used the Red Trouser Day infrastructure to raise money in the full knowledge they can be certain they will know what the money is going to be spent on.

With a focus on transparency and having fun, Paul wanted to create a volunteer charity that made sure over 80% of the funds raised was used to sponsor research and in particular wanted full control over what the money was actually spent on. The Red Trouser Day track record has been running at 95% of funds raised (excluding event costs) being used to sponsor research projects where any applications are scrutinised by the Board of Trustees who take great pride in making sure the funds are spent well under proper governance.

We support the clinicians who fix us

The team below represent the clinicians who have inspired us to do what we do and they benefit from the funds you kindly donate to us

Pic 1: Professor Paris Tekkis
Pic 2: Mr Shahnawaz Rasheed
Pic 3: Mr Christos Kontovounisios
Pic 4: Professor Gina Brown
Pic 5: Dr Irene Chong
Pic 6: Aishani Sachdeva

Special interests:

  • Laparoscopic and robotic colon and rectal cancer
  • Locally advanced and recurrent colorectal cancer
  • Anal cancer / squamous cell carcinoma
  • Pelvic gastrointestinal stromal tumour (gist) surgery
  • Cancer and inflammatory bowel disease (ulcerative colitis/Crohn’s disease)

Read more about Professor Paris Tekkis

RAISING MONEY FOR BOWEL CANCER RESEARCH