Organist's 18-hour hymn recital for cancer charity

Ian Tomlinson aims to play all 571 hymns in the church hymn book in 18 hours

A church organist, recently diagnosed with prostate cancer, is performing an 18-hour marathon recital to raise money for charity.

Ian Tomlinson, 65, from Bulkington, near Devizes, aims to play all 571 hymns in the Church of England hymn book back-to-back.

He started the challenge at Christ Church at 06:00 BST and expects to finish around midnight.

Mr Tomlinson hopes to raise £500 for Prostate Cancer UK, and also increase awareness of the disease.

"I've never played for that length of time before, so it's going to be severely challenging and I'll have to find ways of using the feet more, or using the left hand whilst giving the right hand a rest, and so on," said Mr Tomlinson.

"I'm going to be fine apart from the ramifications of sitting on a wooden bench for a very long period of time, with my arms outstretched."

Visitors to Christ Church in Bulkington are being invited to sing or play along to the hymn recital

Mr Tomlinson was diagnosed with stage one prostate cancer in March.

He said playing the Hymns Old & New book from start to finish seemed like a "logical" undertaking to help raise funds for both his local church and Prostate Cancer UK.

"It was relatively the lowest level of prostate cancer you could get, but it was quite a concerning time and I was looking to do something positive out of something which is quite dispiriting.

"(Prostate cancer) is a tricky one. Men tend not to talk about it. What I'm trying to do is say it is OK to talk about it, it's fine, and it will be OK in the end."

Mr Tomlinson has set up a GoFundMe page and visitors are invited to take part in the challenge by "singing along, playing along with percussion instruments, or just exercising their voices".