Monkhouse lives on in his tweets for cancer charity

Published on Friday 7 August 2009 19:41

A PROSTATE cancer charity is calling on people to sign up to the twitterings of the late comedian Bob Monkhouse, who has been brought back to life as part of a campaign to raise awareness of the disease.

Monkhouse, who died from prostate cancer in 2003, posthumously starred in a film in 2007 to talk about his death, as part of the Prostate Cancer Research Foundation's Give a Few Bob campaign.

Following the success of the original campaign, he has now launched his own page on the micro-blogging site Twitter, to raise awareness of prostate cancer and boost funds.

Monkhouse, the only dead person on Twitter, now has a following of more than 600 and the Prostate Cancer Research Foundation is urging more people to sign up. The tweets are a mix of his jokes, news about the charity and the research it funds, and appeals for funds.

Prostate Cancer Research Foundation chief executive Emma Halls said: "We're up to 673 followers now, but we'd like to get as many people as possible. It would be great to have thousands of people all across the world following Bob.

"We have access to lots of Bob's jokes, which we keep updating on Twitter, and we intersperse it with serious messages, news about the charity and links to any articles that mention Bob.

"It's very lighthearted and it's a great way of keeping Bob alive. He was so well loved."

The charity launched the campaign after meeting the comedian's widow, Jackie, in 2004.

Prostate cancer is the most common cancer in men in the UK, where one man dies from the disease every hour, according to the Prostate Cancer Research Foundation.