Ok then, here goes. I'm dyeing my hair and beard a ridiculous bright shade of purple to raise money for Bart's Charity!

My brother wouldn't be alive now if it wasn't for the London Chest Hospital and this is my way of saying thanks to them for fixing him. This will be happening on 29th October, so I will be looking to collect as much as I can before and after the "go purple" date.

Why purple? It's the colour of Bart's charity, so it seemed like the colour to go for.

The back story and the reason I'm doing this, for those of you who don't know:

Basically, the whole saga started back in May 2012 when my brother Stuart (more commonly known as triff) was rushed into hospital suddenly with a mystery illness. I went down to visit him with a couple of friends on Jubilee weekend expecting him to be getting slowly better, but things took a very sudden turn for the worse just as we arrived and he was immediately transferred to the London Chest Hospital.

At this point it was confirmed he had infective endocarditis which is an infection in the heart, which we quickly discovered had ruined his mitral valve. This meant he had to undergo open heart surgery to remove the infected valve and replace it with a mechanical one.

At first he was too sick to operate on, and was pumped full of "Domestos style" antibiotics for a few days before the surgeons could get stuck in. Luckily for everyone (especially triff), the surgery was a success and after a long stay in hospital, loads more drips, painkillers, morphine and time after that building up his strength again, he gave Endocarditis a good hard slap back and beat the infection. Yay!

So, fast forward to 2016, and my partially mechanised brother has decided, as a way of saying thanks to the London Chest Hospital and its first class team of surgeons, doctors and nurses for saving his life back in 2012, he's going on a fundraising trek with a few friends to Machu Picchu in September to raise some cash for Bart's Charity. I was originally going to go along too, but can't make it so I've decided to raise some money of my own by making myself look ridiculous for a few weeks!

The trip itself has been self funded, so 100% of all of your generous sponsorship donations will be going to Bart's charity to help other people who find themselves in the same unfortunate position as my bro was.

Thanks in advance for any donations, I hope the money raised will make this all worth my while!

Also many thanks to my brother for not actually dying (nothing to do with hair, but he didn't so it's all good), and thanks to an amazing bunch of friends for being there while all this was going on - you know who you are!

triff's own fundraising page is at: https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/triff