A FUNDRAISING family have collected a staggering £170,000 for charity in less than a year in memory of a close family friend who died of cancer.

Paul and Anita Gayler and their daughter Lauren, 21, launched their fundraising drive for the Teenage Cancer Trust after 14-year-old Emily Begg lost her battle against leukaemia.

Since starting their fundraising campaign last May, the family, of Rectory Road, Hadleigh, held a series of events and raised a massive £170,000 in Emily's memory.

Anita, 50, said: "It is not until something like this affects somebody you know that it makes you realise how lucky you are as a family.

"Last May Lauren was invested as May Queen at her university and it spurred us on as a family because one of her roles was to raise funds and she chose the Teenage Cancer Trust as her charity."

As well as Lauren's May Queen efforts at Roehampton University, South London, the family's total has received a massive boost from Paul's contacts in the food industry.

As executive chef at the Lanesborough Hotel in Mayfair Paul, 52, enlisted the help of other chiefs to organise a dinner where household names such as Ainsley Harriott and Anthony Worrall Thompson hosted tables of diners who paid hundreds of pounds for tickets.

Anita has also been busy organising charity dinners at the Tandoori Parlour, Hart Road, Thundersley, and roping in family and friends to help her run coffee mornings and beauty nights.

Anita added: "It has taken over our lives, especially my husband. It's all he talks about, but it is worth it."

The money raised will provide a room at a new £2million centre for teenage cancer sufferers at Addenbrooke's Hospital in Cambridge.

Anita said: "Emily was very fortunate to be treated at a teenage cancer unit at University College London Hospital where the teenagers are together and can support each other.

"If teenagers don't get into the centre at UCHL, they will be put on the kids ward or the adults ward so the new centre at Cambridge will be another place for young people in Essex to go to."

Emily's dad, Stuart Begg, of Wickford, said it was his daughter's last wish when she knew that nothing could be done for her that they would continue to raise the awareness of the Teenage Cancer Trust.