Help support the Thomas family following Ben's passing

I have set this page up on behalf of Ben's family during this difficult time. My lifelong friend, Ben, devastatingly passed away on Wednesday 23rd April whilst on holiday in Sicily with his partner Fede, a decade after his initial cancer diagnosis. Whilst obviously tragic for someone to pass away so young, in Ben's case this is infinitely compounded by his character and the unlimited potential he truly had. Unfortunately his family have now been left to foot the bill for his funeral and other unforeseen costs. As you may imagine, these bills have already run well into the thousands of pounds. If you can, please help me support his family by donating.

I have spent my life looking up to Ben. I had the good fortune of being born a couple of weeks after him, meaning our parents had already lined us up as potential friends from their antenatal class. What came from that was a genuine and deep-rooted friendship that endured living in different towns, to different cities, to different countries.

To those who didn't know Ben, he's an incredibly difficult guy to try and describe. Growing up he was incredibly confident, one of those annoying kids who was born with a six-pack and was unbelievably successful with girls our age - you can start to see why I looked up to him. He was hyper-intelligent, easily the most gifted person I know and someone who I genuinely believe could have excelled in literally any field that he wanted to focus on. This was shown from a young age as he was constantly top of our classes together in any given subject, only giving me further reason to look up to him. He was incredibly hard-working and accomplished remarkable things both academically and at work, despite the last part of his education and his whole career being blighted by his fight with cancer. He remained unrepentant, incredibly focused and determined to live life as he wanted and not be shackled by his illness or for it to make him sorry for himself. He even decided to go and work in his Paris office as the challenges of his job weren't enough in his native language - you can see why I continued to look up to Ben. He also had to deal with losing his father, Mike, shortly into his own battle with cancer but remained positive and determined at times where nearly all of us would have felt broken, another reason I looked up to Ben.

Every time I saw him it felt like no time had passed, slipping straight back into politics, football and potentially a Vince Vaughn-based comedy. He was well rounded as an individual, took great care in people and was fiercely loyal to those he counted as within his circle. Cancer treatment comes with famous side effects, but he also remained incredibly humorous and self-deprecating, with my own disappearing thatch giving us the source of plenty of laughs and discussions.

In reality, I never stopped looking up to Ben. This was down to who he was as a person and also what he had managed to do despite the major setbacks he was dealt. I feel immense pride to have called him my friend and I feel so glad he got the opportunity to meet my daughter so I can spend the rest of my life showing her the pictures of them and telling her about her uncle, Ben. Love you, mate.