Schoolboy who lost his father to brain tumour stars in heartwarming charity video

An eight-year-old schoolboy who lost his father to a brain tumour is the star of a new charity video urging the UK to take part in Wear A Hat Day.

Phoenix Pearman, a pupil at Hook-with-Warsash CE Primary School, talks movingly of his father Ross, who was lost three years ago at the age of 35, and shares his memory book with precious photographs and memories of their life together.

The film, produced by Brain Tumour Research, is being used to promote Wear A Hat Day on Friday 27th March, the UK’s premier brain tumour awareness event, raising money to improve the lives of patients and help find a cure. It can be viewed on You Tube and will be shared widely on social media in the coming weeks.

Phoenix, of Verne Close, Whiteley, is shown wearing a distinctive pink top hat made for the charity by Lock and Co, the world’s oldest hat shop, in St James’s Street, London. He says: “Daddy died on 19th February 2012. He was at home. He had a brain tumour and they couldn’t get it out of his head. I feel bad and I wish I had him back.”

He talks of their shared love of Arsenal Football Club and recites a poem written by Ross, a journalist who worked for a publishing company in Sutton, in which he tells Phoenix “You are our most precious gift” and talks of how he and his wife Amanda looked forward to guiding him and his baby brother Xavier through life’s ups and downs.