On a Friday night, Channel 4’s Gogglebox is a one-stop shop for wholesome and lighthearted viewing, but tonight’s Stand Up To Cancer special has left celebrities and viewers ‘sobbing’.
The popular reality series first hit screens in 2013 and followed friends and family as they watched the best of the previous week’s television.
Over the years, the show has grown to incorporate celebrity specials and multiple spin-off shows in America and Australia and even won a Bafta and a National Television Award.
Tonight, a group of much-loved celebrities took to the couch, including David Baddiel and Frank Skinner, Miriam Margolyes and Leslie Joseph, Jordan Pickford, and Tony Bellew, among others, but it wasn’t they who stole the show.
Partnering with the charitable foundation, Stand Up To Cancer, the episode included the devastating story about seven year old Kaiden and his journey with
medulloblastoma, a cancerous brain tumour.
The little one’s story started as most do, an energetic, happy, health child, until he wasn’t.
‘He started suffering initially from dizziness, he started to have double vision, nausea, and booming pain in the back of his head,’ his mum explained.
Kaiden’s symptoms got progressively worse, and his parents took him for an MRI, which showed their son had a large tumour, the size of a golf ball, in his brain, which, if they had left it untreated for any longer than four weeks, likely would have killed him.
After removing the tumour, Kaiden underwent one year of treatment. Starting with five sessions of proton beam therapy a week for six weeks before moving on to Chemotherapy for a total of eight cycles and 36 weeks.
‘He was needing to use a wheelchair, being sick, chemo is so evil,’ his mum declared.
On the day before his year anniversary of starting treatment, Kaiden had his last chemotherapy session and at the beginning of this year, was in the clear.
But, in March, testing revealed his cancer had returned and the once happy and active little boy was once more, undergoing brutal chemotherapy treatment.
Watching the segment, the Gogglebox stars were visibly upset. Dame Kristin Scott Thomas and Saskia Reeves held back tears, while Josh Widdicombe and Stephen Merchant were too choked up to speak.
‘How do you say that to a seven-year-old?’, Pete Sandiford said through tears when Kaiden’s parents explained the moment they had to tell their son about his diagnosis.
‘What a brave young man,’ Leslie added.
‘There’s just no justice for things like that’, Tony said, while his couchmate Jordan added: ‘The world’s too cruel’.
And many X users agreed. After the segment aired, fans took to social media to express their heartbreaking reaction to Kaiden’s battle.
Lauragatesphotography wrote: ‘Sobbing at Gogglebox’. While ChrisjLatimer said: ‘Oh mate there’s nothing more evil in the world than childhood cancer. Not a single thing’.
Mabel Mouse tweeted: ‘I can’t stand it when little kids get so poorly. It’s not fair.’
Everytime I watch these #SU2C gogglebox specials even though you know it’s coming the stories of families always floors me, just the most unimaginable pain in the world’, Reyes09Sam said.
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Bernadette68 added: ‘Not exactly light viewing to chill on a Friday night. I spend my working hours talking to people who have lost loved ones. It’s heartbreaking when they show these stories.’
Stand Up To Cancer is a charitable program of the Entertainment Industry Foundation run by CEO Julian Adams.
The organisation aims to raise funds for cancer research through online and televised efforts and has previously partnered with the Great British Bake Off to tell stories of their patients.
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Gogglebox is available to stream now on Channel 4.
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