Brave Thomas gets TV award

Jun 1 2007 By Catherine Lillington, Birmingham Mail

TV VIEWERS will tonight see a Birmingham man collect an award for his inspirational battle against cystic fibrosis at a star-studded ceremony.

Thomas McLoughlin will be handed the award by TV presenters Toby Anstis and Amanda Lamb.

The Against All Odds honour will be presented to the 41-year-old at the 12th annual Cystic Fibrosis Trust Breathing Life Awards.

The awards are designed to celebrate the outstanding achievements of people with the nation's most common life-threatening inherited disease.

Tom met wife-to-be Lei Yip in February 2005 when she was working as a paediatric nurse at Birmingham Children's Hospital.

They soon got engaged and their wedding was planned for April last year.

But Tom became ill and had to literally get out of his hospital bed to go for a haircut and the wedding before returning to hospital for another six days.

Tom and Lei underwent ICSI fertility treatment and took part in Robert Winston's TV programme, Against All Odds and his new son was born in February this year.

He has worked for the Cystic Fibrosis Trust for a long time as a cystic fibrosis advocate, then an expert patient adviser.

Stars from the worlds of music, sport and screen including Melanie C, Home and Away's Holly Brisley, Gareth Gates, David Seaman, Kate Lawler, Kirsty Young, Donal McIntyre, EastEnders' Louisa Lytton, Matthew Wright, Anton De Beke, Charlie Dimmock and Roger Black were at the ceremony in London.

The awards will be televised on channel Five Life for the first time at 7pm.