Hi, my name's Amir Dhillon, and over the past 12 years I've been raising money for charity by recreating iconic images and moments from popular culture.

I've raised over £50,000 so far, and if you include GiftAid, that's at least £58,250!

Now, I want to take my fundraising to the next level, by running in the 2025 London Marathon and raising another £5,000.

How did it all start?

In 2012, I launched my first fundraiser whilst studying at university; Movember. I was figuring out ways to get to people’s attention and I saw a Batman mask and posted a picture of myself with the moustache peeking through. I noticed that if I posted something that made people laugh, I got more donations.

The following year, my grandfather passed away from Leukaemia and in his memory, I created another fundraiser for Macmillan Cancer Support. I remember thinking that if I can keep making funny moustache related puns in my fundraising, I’ll do it. That year I dressed up as Anchor Man and Mr Potato Head.

After raising over £1,000 in my first two years...I wanted to do it again!

When I realised that these recreation pictures were working, each year I would start planning more and more, and every year my JustGiving page raised more money than the last. I don’t take any of it lightly, in the first few years especially, I was in shock, it feels like imposter syndrome, I just can’t understand how or why I’ve managed to raise this much money for charity.

Why I chose Mind

In 2014, I decided to make Mind the main charity I was going to support moving forward. Although I didn’t know a lot about my own mental health at the time, I knew it wasn’t great, and I knew people close to me had also struggled.

It's an issue that affects everyone at different levels, there was not a specific incident that made me want to raise money for Mind, but instead it was noticing the vast amount of people I know that are affected by mental health in various ways.

I think as a society we have gotten better at talking about mental health, but we have such a long way to go. We see it being discussed in parliament, in media and through celebrities so I think it has gotten better but it wasn’t exactly in a good place to begin with.

We’ve come a long way as a society, but the past year just shows that there is so much more to do and we need to protect the progress we’ve made because it's in a very fragile state.

Ian O'Reilly, Head of Community & Events Fundraising at Mind:

Pascale Harvie, Present and General Manager of JustGiving: