Festival family in cruel twist of fate (From Herald Series)

Abingdon musician behind fundraising festival for Oxford Children's Hospital has baby with leukaemia

9:00am Wednesday 29th December 2010 in Abingdon By Amanda Williams

WHEN musician James Phillpott set up a fundraising festival in aid of the Oxford Children’s Hospital he was just doing a favour for a friend.

He had no idea that a few months later, his family would be forced to call on the lifesaving unit too.

Keyboard player Mr Phillpott, from Abingdon, came up with the idea for the Yeah Baby! festival, which has been held in the town for the past two years, when his friend’s son was given lifesaving treatment at the hospital.

Bandmate Andy and his wife Alice Boon’s son Archie was born with life-threatening congenital heart defects in 2008 and the couple were desperate to try to repay teams at the Oxford Children’s Hospital.

In the past two years the festival has raised more than £6,000 for children’s hospital and Ronald McDonald House, a charity providing accommodation for the families of seriously ill children.

But in October, in a cruel twist of fate, Mr Phillpott said he and his partner Fleur’s world came tumbling down when their baby daughter Amber was diagnosed with leukaemia, and they actually had to call the people they had been fundraising for.

The illness was diagnosed after she suffered a stroke in her cot.

The father-of-two, who also has a four-year-old daughter called Daisy, said: “To be honest it felt like our world had been shattered. We had reached rock bottom.

“But the more things start to unfold, you realise you can’t go on with the self-pity. You have to be positive, take all the support you can from friends and family.

“The irony of the situation obviously dawned on us. We had done all this work for the charities and for the hospital, and here we are.

“But it has just made us even more determined to make the festival bigger and better than ever before, so we can raise as much as possible.”

Mr Phillpott, who plays in a band called the Benbows, is already planning big things for this summer’s event in the town square, including the usual mix of local music talent, food and children’s entertainment.

The festival is free, but organisers ask people to donate what they think it is worth into collection buckets.

He said: “We never saw the festival as insurance. We had no idea this would ever happen to us or our children. But we want to take every positive out of this situation.

“It has been hard, but without the charities and the hospital we would have had a much, much harder time.

“Now we want to do