by Broadcaster Jeff Stelling says being made an MBE in recognition of his work with the charity Prostate Cancer UK is the “icing on the cake” of his incredible career.
Stelling is best known as the highly animated presenter of Sky’s Soccer Saturday programme, which he hosted for 25 years until he stepped down at the end of last season, and for lending his first name to his colleague Chris Kamara often used phrase “Unbelievable Jeff” .
But it is his role as an ambassador for Prostate Cancer UK, where he has walked 34 marathons and led the way in raising more than £1.7 million since 2016, that he is most proud of and has now gained recognition for. in New Year’s Honours. List.
“I’m very proud to have the opportunity to do it,” he told the PA news agency.
“It’s been great to help raise awareness, but the fundraising has been done by the hundreds and hundreds of people who come and walk with me. All I have to do is put one foot in front of the other and lend my name to the marches.
“People think they’re going to be terrible affairs but no, they’re a celebration of life. Every day is a day of joy in doing it.
“I’m doing a job that most people would give an arm and a leg for. So, although I’ve had a wonderful and fortunate career, I’m glad that the MBE is in recognition of the charity work more than anything.”
Laura Kerby, the charity’s chief executive, said: “We are delighted that the ‘incredible’ Jeff Stelling has been honoured. For almost a decade, Jeff has been an incredible ambassador for Prostate Cancer UK, helping us to raise vital awareness of the disease throughout the football community.
“During his years in the Sky Sports Soccer Saturday studio, Jeff wore our ‘Man of the Men’ badge every week, encouraging football fans to learn more about this cancer which affects one in eight men, and action is many of them did. to save lives.
“On behalf of Prostate Cancer UK, and all the men and families we represent, we are so proud to have Jeff on our team and grateful for his selfless efforts. This honor is richly deserved.”
Stelling himself recalled coming across one such incident when he saved a life by wearing a charity badge.
“At the end of the first day (of the first of 10 marathons from Hartlepool to Wembley in 2016) we finished at Marske on the north east coast, blistered, broken, not knowing what we’d got ourselves into and thinking we couldn’t do a second day, maybe,” he said.
He was introduced to a woman who said she saw Stelling wearing the badge, who found out what it represented and then read on to find out the symptoms of prostate cancer.
“Lo and behold her husband had all the symptoms. He went and got tested, got treatment,” Stelling said.
“She just wanted to say thank you – that you’ve saved my husband’s life just wear the badge and he’ll be fine.
“The cancer was so advanced that if she hadn’t Googled it then, he would be dead. Over the years since then, it’s a story I’ve had time and time again.”
Stelling was known as the Saturday Soccer presenter for the amazing statistics he always had at his fingertips.
When asked how he achieved it, he said: “It was the old ‘Forth Bridge Painting’ job. As soon as one program finished, you started the next one.
“I would throw myself into statistics, probably from Wednesday I would spend almost entirely doing statistics and my wife thought I was the saddest man in the world.”
One stat he was particularly pleased to have put up was the fact that Gareth Jelleyman, who was at Mansfield at the time, was never sent off. At least not until the Stags’ League Two match at Cheltenham on October 29, 2005.
“Then it was, in the 90th minute,” Stelling said.
“I could use the line I’ve been waiting about a year to use – ‘Gareth Jelleyman’s out. Let’s hope he didn’t throw it badly.
“What I do for a job is not a matter of life and death. I had a lot of fun and my only ambition is to keep having fun.”
Stelling recalled an instance where the light-hearted program was more impressive.
“One day I received a stumbling letter. It was from a young woman who was in the depths of despair and was thinking of ending her life, she said she was just in a long dark tunnel and she couldn’t see a way out,” he said.
“Her brother was a football fan, she wasn’t at the time. He put on Saturday Soccer. She said she saw this raving buffoon waving his arms around and yelling at the camera and coming out with all kinds of wild statistics.
“And she said it would be an achievement if I was still alive next Saturday, when Jeff is on. She said the following Saturday that she was still alive, and the Saturday after that, and it became a sort of strange game between her and death, to try to find the following week.
“She managed to climb out of that tunnel. She has gone on to become a nurse, saving the lives of others. It was the most exciting letter. Sometimes (while presenting the program) you would think ‘what are we doing here? It’s fun and it’s scary but it’s a little bit worthwhile’.
“But when you get a letter like that it gives the program extra meaning.”
