Hundreds dine in for Clatterbridge, Your Cancer Centre

BBC Radio Merseyside listeners organised their own dinner parties

Hundreds of BBC Radio Merseyside listeners took part in the region's biggest simultaneous dinner party on Saturday, 5 February.

The Come Dine At Mine event was raising funds for the station's charity partner Clatterbridge, Your Cancer Centre.

Linda McDermott presented a live programme of conversation and music while listeners hosted their own dinner parties at home.

BBC Radio Merseyside have raised over £70,000 for the charity since May 2010.

The partnership between the radio station and the charity began in March 2010 and will continue until the end of April 2010.

Since March 2010 donations to the charity have purchased two 'chemo cars' for staff to visit patients at clinics nearer their home, radio pagers for patients and a sterotactic head frame for the treatment of brain tumours.

Clatterbridge clinicians treat patients at the hospital in south Wirral and at various centres across Merseyside, Cheshire and Lancashire. The hospital is also opening a satellite centre at Aintree University Hospital on 14 February.

The centre can trace its orgins to the Liverpool Hospital for Cancer and Diseases of the Skin which was set up by local surgeon James Seaton Smythe in 1862.

The centre moved to Wirral in the 1950s as a base for the development of radiotherapy services.