****NONE OF THE FOLLOWING IS TO BE QUOTED OR REFERRED TO ELSEWHERE WITHOUT MY PERMISSION***
Anyway. Saturday October 13th, 2001. My father and I were in the Priority Ticket Scheme, and went as often as we could. I wanted to go to that day's game, which was against Leeds United. However, my father couldn't go, as he was working, on-call. He was a doctor at the Cardiothoracic Centre in Liverpool. At half-time the score was 1-0 to Leeds, and there were reports that Gerard Houllier had been rushed into hospital with chest pains. Danny Murphy equalised, and soon after that, my father phoned home. I asked him if Houllier had been admitted with the chest pains, and he told me he knew nothing about that and asked to speak to my mum. He spoke to her briefly, and after she came off the phone, my mum said to me, "Your dad's about to anaesthetise Gerard Houllier!".
As we all know, Gerard recovered extremely well after an extremely complicated operation, and although thing didn't turn out well in the end for him and Liverpool, he's still alive and very healthy.
Sadly, my father is not. He was diagnosed with prostate cancer in late 2006, aged 48, and died on 23rd February of this year, aged 50, after deteriorating shortly after the New Year. Soon after his diagnosis, he took me to Athens. That was my last trip away with him.
Some of you may have seen him in the Press more recently, relating to a GMC hearing. All I'll say here is that what a lot of the Press failed to cover, including, of course, The S*n, he was completely cleared of any wrongdoing, I.e. was found completely innocent. There are some papers that did cover that story, such as the Daily Post, and that can all be found online.
My sister is doing a sponsored skydive to raise money for The Prostate Cancer Charity, in his memory. Details can be found at:
http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/group.php?gid=53437132201&ref=mf and
http://www.justgiving.com/carolinemurphy10****NONE OF THE ABOVE IS TO BE QUOTED OR REFERRED TO ELSEWHERE WITHOUT MY PERMISSION***
(this is because I don't particularly want the Press to report my father's death, due to the way in which they covered his GMC hearing, which made him sound guilty from the very beginning, and then failed to acknowledge that he had been cleared)
