MBE for campaigner with terminal cancer who walked length of UK

A music teacher who was diagnosed with terminal cancer in 2023 has said he hopes being made an MBE will be a “springboard” for his campaigning work.

Nathaniel Dye told the PA news agency he was “absolutely thrilled” to be made a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in the New Year Honours List for his work campaigning for cancer awareness and an improved NHS.

He said: “It was all very exciting, one of those brown envelopes you would expect to have some kind of tax form, but infinitely more exciting.”

The campaigner added: “What would have been nicer is if my elderly father had lived to see it.”

Mr Dye said his father, who died earlier this year aged 88, had been “foremost in my mind when I received the letter”.

Since receiving his diagnosis of stage 4 bowel cancer, 39-year-old Mr Dye, from east London, has raised more than £37,000 for Macmillan through challenges such as walking from Land’s End to John o’ Groats and running the London Marathon while playing the trombone.

He has also urged more people to learn the signs of cancer and see their doctor early if they are experiencing symptoms, saying he waited too long to take action in his own case.

Mr Dye said he planned to continue “being useful” after being made an MBE, and “trying to do as much living as I can”, including releasing an album.

He told PA: “The way I see the is: what if it’s a springboard to something else?

“Maybe this will get people listening to me a bit more. Being a dying man, it doesn’t necessarily get you a yes, but it gets you a listening.”

He has also become involved in politics since his diagnosis, calling for improvements to cancer care after experience a 15-week wait to start treatment.

In 2023 he introduced his MP, then-shadow health secretary Wes Streeting, at the Labour Party conference and this year spoke at the launch of Labour’s election manifesto.

Since the election, he has met the Prime Minister in Downing Street and campaigned with Labour MP Kim Leadbeater on her assisted dying Bill – a debate that he said showed “Parliament at its best”.

He is positive about Labour’s plans for the NHS, telling PA: “I’m not claiming that Wes waves a magic wand, but a few weeks ago I went in for a CT scan – and the policies were more scans, more appointments for evenings and weekends to clear the backlog – and here I am on a Sunday, mid-afternoon, I’m in and out in 15 minutes for a scan and apparently they’ve got 40 appointments that day.

“I’m aware I probably won’t live to see the kind of change that would give me a better outcome, but I think that’s an indication that things are getting moving.”