After receiving a brain cancer diagnosis in January 2018, Riko endured multiple surgeries, countless scans and debilitating treatments with uncomplaining grace, humour, and no small amount of loud and tuneless but enthusiastic singing.

With treatments complete, Riko retrained as a teacher in 2020. It was a natural calling for him and he adored his students. However, he suffered a recurrence earlier this year. Further treatment proved ineffective and he entered palliative care in September.

Riko passed away at home on Wednesday 16th November 2022 surrounded by love with his parents, sister, brother-in-law, nephew, and dogs at his side.

Your kind thoughts and words, enduring friendship, and/or presence at his service and wake if able to attend are all greatly appreciated.

CHARITABLE CAUSES

However, if you are inclined to honour his memory and generous spirit in a more concrete way, we ask for charitable donations in lieu of any flowers or gifts.

Any charitable donations, however large or small, to the following charities that were meaningful to Riko would be gratefully received.

You can donate to either (or both!) by following the Donate to a Team Member link above or going to these links for the Willow Foundation or Brain Tumour Charity pages (and please remember to select the Gift Aid option if applicable, for an additional boost).

The WILLOW FOUNDATION was founded by former Arsenal goalkeeper and BBC Personality Bob Wilson and his wife Megs, following the death of their daughter Anna.

Willow provides special experiences to young people, ranging from arranging and funding staycations to being immortalised as a character in a favourite video game.

As a Liverpool FC super-fan, Willow arranged for Riko to meet Jurgen Klopp and the Liverpool team - an experience that he described as one of the best days of his life.

The BRAIN TUMOUR CHARITY is the world’s leading brain tumour charity and the largest dedicated funder of research into brain tumours globally.

Riko's cancer has a 5 year survival rate of 5%. Virtually no-one with a glioblastoma survives 10 years, and survivability has barely improved for many decades. Despite this, there has been some promising recent research into mRNA treatments which we hope will, with continued funding, provide better prospects for future victims of this devastating disease.

SERVICE AND WAKE

The service for Riko was held at 3pm on Friday 9th December at the Landican Cemetery and Crematorium, Birkenhead, Wirral. The wake was held from 4.30pm at Capitol, CH41 6AE.

We thought that those of you unable to make it to the service would enjoy reading what friends and family had to say about Riko:

CHERYL & DOUN

BIRTH: We’d like to tell Riko’s story by starting right from the very beginning. Riko Yu was born in Evangel Hospital, Kowloon City, Hong Kong on 31st October, 1992, at 1:11pm. True to his Halloween birthday, and Monkey birth year, Riko was a cheeky little monster, notorious in the neighbourhood for chasing and biting relatives, playmates, and unsuspecting strangers alike.

MOVING TO LIVERPOOL: It was only on moving to the UK at the age of three that he discovered the existence of dishes such as lasagne, katsu curry, pizza, and potato salad. To his astonishment, they were even tastier than people, and so ended his biting phase, and began a lifelong love affair with food.

The next year, Riko was honoured to be pageboy at his Auntie May’s wedding. As the music for the first dance played, he raced the bride and groom onto the dancefloor, and at the end of the evening was last off it. Even at the age of five, Riko showed off the lack of rhythm and shame-free overconfidence that would become his signature dancing style.

SECONDARY SCHOOL: From the age of eleven, Riko spent seven formative years at Birkenhead School. There, he discovered a passion for Science, another Asian (only one, and not even the same kind!), what one teacher described as a “shampoo advert” hairstyle, and the forbidden thrill of Ed Brown’s strong, but sensitive embrace.

He ended his time at Birkenhead School with the Governors’ prize, a top three rank in his year, and several deep and enduring friendships.

His academic strength earned him a place at the prestigious Imperial College London to read Chemical Engineering, and so it was a tragic irony that a few short years later it was this same brain that started to fail him, when a seizure in 2018 led to a cancer diagnosis.

TEACHING: After surgery and a long period of treatment and recovery, Riko lost his job as a consultant. Hoping to share his enthusiasm for science, and to leave a legacy of other bright, young, enquiring minds, Riko retrained as a teacher.

As an educator, Riko was a natural. His drive (despite debilitating bouts of chemo), affability, and grasp of the Sciences shone through. Although he only made it two years into his teaching career, faculty and students spoke fondly to us of his energy and singing.

Meanwhile, even on the limited wages of a trainee teacher, Riko insisted on sending a generous chunk of his monthly paycheque to his grandma in Hong Kong - just one of the many ways he demonstrated 孝顺 [haau3 seon6] – the Confucian concept of filial piety, or in other words the care and respect of a child towards one’s forebearers.  

BECOMING A (F)UNCLE: But Riko wasn’t just a fantastic grandson. He was a favourite human and fun uncle (a “funcle”) for his many doggy fur nephews and, last year, he became an equally-loved funcle to his first non-fur nephew Dylan.

When Dylan was born, we recognised that Uncle Riko’s time with him would be sadly limited. It occurred to Cheryl and I that choosing a middle name for Dylan presented an opportunity to honour Uncle Riko and one day serve to keep his memory alive.

We relayed our decision over dinner. “Riko, we picked a middle name for Dylan. Do you want to guess what we picked?”. No sooner had we given the clue, “He’s named after someone you would probably say is one of the greatest people in the world” he blurted out “Riko? No way!! Really? Is he named Riko!?” Once he’d stopped dancing and sat back down, he beamed, telling us, “Dylan Riko Choi! Well, now I have to love him even more!”

END OF LIFE: As the tumour spread, the disease progressively stripped Riko of many of his traits and habits that we knew and loved. As he weakened and lost sensation down one side, he lost the ability to walk, let alone dance. The drugs left him increasingly confused and uncharacteristically short-tempered. And his vocabulary shrank by the day. But even through all this, Riko remained upbeat, never showing a shred of self-pity or uttering a word of complaint.

Even after he could no longer hold a conversation, he would still hear a favourite lyric and spontaneously burst into song (although only the first two lines, of course). And if a particularly banging tune came on, he would bop his head along in appreciation (although not in rhythm, of course).

With limited means to express himself, Riko would still regularly reach out with his one good hand to scratch a passing furry head, grasp his nephew’s hand, or fire out a Korean hand heart from across the room, much to his nephew’s delight.

One evening, by then barely able to speak, Nancy was preparing to once again stay in his room to help monitor and care for him through the night. From his bed, Riko focused his eyes on his mother and forced out an “Umm… uhh…”. We gathered round to hear what he had to say. Shifting uncomfortably with effort, he managed “Mum… mum… I… I… I…”. We all leaned in, hoping for one of his increasingly rare sentences – perhaps an “I appreciate you”? Or “I love you”? Instead, he gasped “I… don’t like… how much you snore!” and chuckled to himself.

A few weeks later, on 16th November, 2022, at 8:05am, Riko Yu passed in the family home, here on the Wirral, his family at his side. It was thirty too-short years after his story started.

CLOSING WORDS: On behalf of the family, I would like to take this opportunity to express our thanks, in particular to those of you who have been so amazing these last few months, providing company, care, medical advice, treats, kind messages, sushi, and comfort to Riko and to the family. There are too many of you to list, but you all know who you are.

Also, our sincere thanks to everyone for their very many incredibly generous donations to a couple of worthy causes that were meaningful to Riko – the Brain Tumour Charity, and the Willow Foundation.

The latter sets up Special Days for seriously ill young people and we couldn’t tell Riko’s story without mentioning football and his own Special Day. After all, his first words on waking from almost fifteen hours of brain surgery were not “How did the operation go?”, but “What was the score?”. Willow gave Riko the opportunity to meet his heroes, Jürgen Klopp, Mo Salah, and the rest of the Liverpool squad – an experience he would later say was among the best moments of his life. Your generosity will help Willow create many more Special Days for people in similar situations.

We hope you can all join us in a celebration of Riko’s life with some food and karaoke at the wake, and let us thank you with a drink or two.

But, if I may, I would like to finish by asking two more favours. Nancy and Eric are going through an unbelievably unfair and unforgiving time – no parent should have to bury their child. So, maybe not right now, but from time to time, please drop in on them or give them a call.

The second favour is that we ask you to do your best to not let Riko be forgotten. Now and then in the years to come, when you find yourself singing in the car; or throwing shapes on the dance floor; watching Liverpool disappoint you once again, or biting into a lasagne, a pizza, or a small Chinese neighbourhood child, please can you think of Riko, remember his infectious laugh, recall his cheeky smile, and remind yourself of all the happiness and joy that he brought to the world.

Thank you.

ELLIE AND EMMA

Emma: Right, let’s get down to business. We had to reference Riko’s favourite song by Tiesto somewhere. We’re two of Riko’s very good friends and are truly honoured to have been asked to stand here today and say a few words.

For those of you who don’t know me, I’m Emma, I met Riko about 13 years ago, first tentatively through the questionable teenage house party scene but then became good friends when I joined Birkenhead School for 6th form. What really bonded us through that time in 6th form was a shared love of science, and minty polos, so much so that we used to buy a packet every single day in school and share them, resulting in us deciding, obviously, that we were going to get married and live in a polo house, being an actual house made of polos.

Ellie: My name is Ellie and although I am also from Cheshire, I met Riko in 2015 in our very first graduate job together at FIS on Canary Wharf. There were six of us graduates starting at the same time and whilst we all tried to learn about oil and complex gas trading, I can safely say we all excelled much better in finding the best ‘2for1 Friday drinks deals in the area.

Emma: Whilst Riko and I knew each other from school and Riko and Ellie knew each other from work, Ellie and I actually know each other through university, so there was a lovely triangle of friendship that grew through our shared time in London and mutual love of Liverpool FC.

When Ellie and I were first asked to say a few words here today, we thought long and hard about the best way to honour Riko and do him justice with our words, and we couldn’t think of a better way than simply sharing some of our favourite memories with him that we think truly reflect the essence of Riko.

Ellie: One of the many life hacks that Riko taught me as a graduate is called ‘the Waitrose banana coffee run’. This life hack entails adventuring down from the 39th Floor of the Citi tower into a Waitrose supermarket in the basement below where we would buy precisely one banana from the fruit aisle. But this isn’t just any old banana, with this 16p banana we were officially allowed to get any tea of coffee from the Waitrose Cafe for free. Nothing tastes better than a bargain for us graduates, so the banana coffee run quickly became a daily ritual...sadly Waitrose has now stopped offering free beverages to its customers, possibly thanks to us.

Ellie: After completing our training, a few of us grads were posted out to the exotic city of Mannheim in Germany for our first project with a client. Whilst visiting clients, we were all given a daily allowance of €90 to spend on food and drink. For most people, this became an opportunity to save a bit of money, possibly spending some of the allowance on food, whilst saving the rest. For Riko however, this was the ultimate food challenge – how to spend and eat €90 worth of food & drink a day!? At the start, only Riko took part in this epic food challenge. But one day, to Riko’s delight, the rules of our contracts changed to a ‘use it or lose it’ model so we all joined in on Riko’s food challenge. The restaurants of Mannheim loved us, but they especially loved Riko and his ability to find and consume a family feast platter of sushi just for himself!

Emma: And speaking of food, because we all know just Riko loved his food, I have a very fond memory of going for lunch with Riko and one of his university friends, Adam. Riko suggested that we go to a Korean BBQ restaurant down in Oxford Street that he loved. Given Riko had suggested the place and knew what was good there, we gave him completely free reign on the ordering. Naturally he ordered a four person banquet for the three of us. After spending a few hours chomping through an enormous amount of food, the waiting staff came over to tell us they had the table booked for a party after us and tried to ask us to pay up and vacate the table. However, Riko refused to move on the basis that we still hadn’t eaten our dessert. In the end, Riko won and they let us stay. In true Riko fashion, there’s always room for dessert!

Emma: Another very fond memory I have of Riko, was one night when we went for dinner with our school friends, Ed and Greg, to a ramen restaurant in Brixton. After a few sake’s each with dinner, we somehow ended up in the nearest pub which happened to be holding a drag queen karaoke night. I can’t quite remember why we thought this was a good idea, but Ed, Greg and I all got up and took our turn doing one obligatory song each. Riko, on the other hand, performed about 10 songs, very loudly and somewhat out of tune. We honestly couldn’t get him off the stage. My personal favourite, and the one that sticks in mind, was him singing “All Rise” by “Blue” really trying to work the crowd and yelling for everyone to get on their feet for the chorus, at which point only me, Ed and Greg stood up. Clearly karaoke was a true passion for Riko.

Ellie: Of course, we couldn’t speak about Riko without including a Liverpool FC story. In 2019, after Riko’s second operation, he was granted a wish from the Willow foundation to meet the Liverpool football team and watch them train at Melwood training ground. Emma and I were also invited along to join him on this epic day and whilst we were happily meeting and chatting with all the players, including the legendary Jurgen Klopp, Riko was fan-girling them so badly he couldn’t say a single word!

Emma: However, perhaps that actually worked out quite well, because whilst Ellie and I brought one item each to be signed by the players, Riko brought about 5 things to be signed by everyone so they wouldn’t have time to chat and sign anyway!

Ellie: As we mentioned at the start, it is such an honour to share some of our memories of Riko with you, we have many more and I’m sure you will certainly have your own.

Emma: We hope these stories have captured the essence of Riko’s personality and reflect how he will be remembered by all.

ANTASH

Dear friends and family,

My names Antash. I’m one of Riko’s best friends from school, and I’m honoured to have been asked to say a few words as we celebrate his life today.

One of the most profound ways that riko and I bonded was through our love of music, which I think is the is the most apt way to describe him.

His intricate, intelligent and perseverant notes allowed him to create a symphony of success.

He excelled in all of his endeavours,and has given all students that he taught the inspiration to do the same.

His heart sung songs of creativity, kindness and generosity. He was as colourful and vibrant as the liverpool games and fantasy shows that he relished and his company was as comforting as the food he loved to share with us.

And how could I forget the the weird and wonderful interludes denoted by his high pitch hair and his low key dance moves.

He stayed strong, smiling and hungry throughout his ups and downs and I couldn’t be more grateful for what he’s taught me about resilience, family and being the change you want to see in the world.

Thank you Riko, for being a bright light in our lives and reminding us that we will never walk alone through these stormy days, as we have you by our side.

RACHEL

A letter to my dearest friend Riko.

Dear Riko,

Introduction

I did always wonder why you needed that second birthday meal. I just thought it was for your unrequited love for the Tai Pan. But now, looking at all these people here, I can see that there just wasn’t a table big enough to fit all your loved ones around. Over the last few months whilst your family were trying to organise your social calendar, your dad said to me, “we just didn’t realise how many friends he had”. It was beautiful and reflects just how many people loved you and how wonderful it has been to have you in our lives.

All of us here will have our own special memory with you. Perhaps that’s watching you in a dress strutting some moves on the dance floor, rapping out of tune in the car or simply having a quiet stroll on a beach with the hundreds of dogs your sister had rescued. Each of these should be treasured. So, I’d like to spend some time now reminiscing on a few of the special memories that we shared together and with our school friends.

High school

We met whilst in high school, and being Chinese, there was always going to be competition for who could be the best. However, your ability to actually speak Chinese, your weekly attendance at the Tai Pan, and your tolerance for alcohol really did set you apart.

Like most, our teenage years were spent at numerous house parties. It wasn’t long into the night before you could be found in the make-shift dance room swinging your hips from side to side and rolling those arms back and forth like you were in some cheesy boy band. There was the occasional moment where you’d decide to sneak off, clearly finding it more fun to either go swimming in the nearby pond in search for any missing phones, or have another topless photo shoot with Ed. But even amongst all the chaos, you were always so thoughtful. You had a special talent for making sure that everyone felt involved and that they were having fun. You’d be the one who noticed someone's clumsy moment and send a cheeky smile there way to make them feel better. Or at the end of the night, you’d be full of hugs to stay warm as we stood outside on the cold cobbled streets of Liverpool.

At the end of high school, you took me to prom, clearly intruding on yours and Emma’s marriage arrangements. We then all went to Tenerife where we had too much fun. Though I still can’t believe that after all those pool games, the tidal waves, the inflatables, and the water park you didn’t tell us you couldn’t swim.

University

Being the incredibly smart bean that you are, after school you packed up and left for London. A city which you loved. However, despite the new earring and now being a Korean boyband wannabe, you never changed. One of your greatest attributes was always turning up and being keen for any activity we’d suggest. You never cared if it didn’t seem cool or popular. I remember one time Vicky and I came to stay and even though you pretended you didn’t want to, it really wasn’t hard to persuade you to go and see ‘Shrek the musical’ that evening. I think you secretly loved it too, as the following morning I woke up to you singing the opening song whilst in bed.

For me, I will always remember how much you cared about your friends and how you made such an effort to spend time with us. You were always a committed member of Laura’s Annual Christmas dinner. Your commitment to being good at Dave’s quiz was, however, less impressive. Despite your intelligence, your Christmas trivia never did improve, and I think you, me and Ed were always right at the bottom of the score board.

During Uni you went on some amazing trips abroad and just our luck we somehow even managed to meet up during them. Once whilst you were over in Tianjin and then in Hong Kong. You’d usually laugh at the fact that we’d be sat around another table full of ‘aunties’ and ‘uncles’ we didn’t know, and I couldn’t speak to. You’d start to translate and then give up and instead wed just descend into our own conversation in the corner, enjoying the ridiculously strong air con and eating some proper Chinese food.

Brain tumour and teacher

It was only after a few years of working that you were diagnosed with your brain tumour. You never did let on to us how scared you must have felt. You were so brave going through it all. I know you hated having all those blood tests and being so tired from the treatment. But your ability to cope with everything was truly inspiring. Despite all the trauma, you were still your smiling, positive, bubbly self. Not long after your operation, I challenged you to an arm wrestle. It has taken some time, but I finally apologise for beating you. You must understand though, I couldn’t miss out on an opportunity to win one.

There are not many people here that have the bravery to change careers. But after you had recovered from your second surgery, you quit your job and retrained as a teacher. I’m so glad you did this as it was such an amazing experience for you. Your students were so lucky to have you. You must have been the most fun teacher at school. And, despite all that marking and those crazy detentions you had to sit through, I know you had finally found a job which you found truly rewarding.

As time went on and things changed, instead of big nights out, we tried to act more like adults and spend all our money on delicious food. I once suggested we try out every restaurant on Bold Street, a task only the brave could & should complete. On one afternoon trip to Liverpool, I think we had tried out about four different eateries only to end up back at the Tai Pan for dinner with my parents. Sometimes good food should not be compromised on. Delicious food and eating out became a staple in our social lives. Particularly when it came to assembling our school friends for those overdue catch ups, despite some not sharing your love of sushi. It is an undeniable fact that the Tai Pan was almost our second home and Antash and I will forever be looking over our shoulders for you whenever we visit.

Final

On our last trip out together, we went for brunch, and I could see you were struggling to find the right words. But as we drove back home, we put on some Disney tunes and like nothing was happening, you were singing along with me out of tune, and I knew the real Riko was still there.

So, thank you for all your positive energy, your beaming smile and that laugh. You almost managed to convinced us that we were actually funny. It has been an honour being your friend and I am so glad we got to spend all those years together… You have brought us all closer and have taught us the importance of friendship and making the most of our precious lives. You will be dearly missed by me, your friends, and your incredible family.

So, until we meet again, I would like to end my letter to you with these lyrics:

What would you do if I sang out of tune?

Would you stand up and walk out on me?

Lend me your ears, and I’ll sing you a song

And I’ll try not to sing out of key

What do I do when my love is away?

Does it worry you to be alone?

How do I feel by the end of the day?

Are you sad because you’re on your own?

I get by with a little help from my friends

I get by with a little help from my friends.