Nicky’s front page challenge nets £5,000 for charity

Nicky Gomez, the founder of the ‘Free The Knee’ charity drive, waxed his legs and shaved his head yesterday ahead of Friday’s event – and netted £5,000 for Prostate Cancer Support Group Gibraltar in the process.

The event, which raises awareness of prostate cancer and is now in its fifth year, is organised by the Gibraltar Financial Services Commission, whose staff got creative this year.

The charitable but painful actions stem from a challenge set by a top executive at gaming company Mansion, who pledged £5,000 if Mr Gomez shaved his head, waxed his legs and made the front page of the Chronicle.

Yesterday Mr Gomez upheld his side of the pledge and today, this newspaper is happy to oblige too.

The waxing process took over 30 mins and was expertly executed by a beautician at The Look in Europort, who donated her services free and removed all the hair from Mr Gomez’s legs.

“We were trying to look for creative ways to raise funds for the charity and Mansion offered £5,000 in exchange for me shaving my head and waxing my legs,” said Mr Gomez.

“A friend of mine is the CEO of Mansion and has very generously donated for the last two years.”

“I asked him if he would be donating again and it just escalated from ‘yeah I will give you £2,000 if you shave your head’ to ‘£5,000 if you also wax your legs’,” Mr Gomez said, adding that the final condition was to make page one of this newspaper.

Communications officer at GFSC, Sinead Ballester, said that so far this year the Commission had raised £2,000 holding other events and together with this £5,000 it will bring the total to £7,000.

However, GFSC expect to exceed last year’s total of £8,000 as donations are still coming in.

“I hope everyone takes part in Free The Knee on Friday. With prostate cancer the more awareness there is the better,” she said.

Echoing her statement was Derek Ghio from Prostate Cancer Support Group Gibraltar, who has a strong message of awareness and action.

“Free The Knee is extremely important because everything that has to do with awareness of the disease actually save lives,” he said.

“You create awareness, people become more knowledgeable of their symptoms and they go to their GP and ask to be tested.”

“It is a simple blood test,” he added.

He also stressed that it was important that not only do people get themselves tested but take action following their results as not everyone does.

Prostate cancer in the UK affects one in four men.

For more information on prostate cancer go to http://www.pcsg.gi/ and for more information on Free The Knee visit https://www.facebook.com/FreeTheKneeGFSC/

Pics by Eyleen Gomez