it's not about accepting that dianne's died. i can't do that. you don't think to yourself, i'm going to lose my partner, i'm going lose my wife, i'm going to lose my best friend. you know, the kids are gonna lose their mum. a year ago, ian lost his wife to ovarian cancer, two children lost a mother. and her death has left the team here at north west tonight heartbroken. but we know that sadness is also shared by you.

i lost a colleague and a friend. hundreds of thousands of viewers lost a familiar face from their living rooms. tonight, we'll meet fathers, daughters, mothers, husbands affected by ovarian cancer — something which killed my own mum. for it to come back so quickly and to have spread so quickly, she can't get out of bed. and she's taken so much medication. you know, we've had this whole kitchen full of painkillers. it's devastating to know that with the knowledge, we could have done something different. we'll be asking why there's still a lack of awareness, funding and research into this deadly disease and discovering why in 2020 ovarian cancer

shouldn't be a silent killer. at the moment, the survival chances for a woman with ovarian cancer are what? bleak. god love her! you've made it, sunshine. when she was on the radio or on camera, she was utterly herself. and i think viewers and listeners just innately know that she was sort of the first person i really met right before i went on air at radio 1, when i was terrified. and she wasjust hilarious. just hit it off immediately. steve wright quickly spotted, who is

this girl? she has amazing charisma and wet. quickly she was pulled into his afternoon posse. were you promoted on your looks or musical ability? dianne moved to manchester in the early 1990s, catching the eye of cameraman ian hindle. when she came along, it was the talk at the studio. are the first time that she saw me, i was actually standing in for a liverpudlian singer called sonia. she wasn't actually there, she was late so i was actually pretending to be sonia and dancing along whilst miming to her record. we got engaged the following year and then we were married in 1993. yeah, 25 years of a really happy marriage, so... trick or treating tomorrow night? yes, i will be fully dressed. dianne was at home in front of the camera, but her top

priority was life at home. i don't think she had any perception of how popular she was. she was not starry in any way. dianne's number one aim in life was once she had finished herjob, to go straight home and see the kids. just the best listener! it wasn't ever hot air, was it? no. siobhan and jo were two of dianne's closest friends. you had your individual reasons for being close to her. that won't ever go away, will it? we met when our children were tiny. very young. we both became new mothers, we were the same age. we were doing this

rather late in life. it was always great to be with her because you always felt lighter at the end of it. because you met her... walking the dogs. but there have been times when she has had poo bags on her hands instead of gloves. you know, she is wearing her daughter's scarf, and a little tiny hat. she did not care. dianne's life seemed complete, but in the autumn of 2018, things started to go wrong. october time, perhaps, she complained of stomach aches, feeling nauseous. she had been complaining of feeling tired and... just, she was definitely not herself. i think she went on to feel a lot worse over the weeks after that. so it was round about christmas

that she got very unwell. so much so that she had to go to a&e, the hospital. and from there, things went very quickly wrong. well, from having the diagnosis on new year's eve 2018, to her dying, was ten days. she had stage three c ovarian cancer. i wasn't expecting that, even as a medical professional. i remember her saying to me probably about a week before she died, "i don't think i'm going to get through this." when was she aware that she was not going to get better? i doubt it was more than 48 hours before she died. i asked her, are you frightened? and she said, i don't know what to be frightened. she was incredibly brave and extraordinary.

the kids needed to see their mum and dianne needed to see her kids. she perked up when they came in to see her. they were holding her hand and talking to her. obviously, the following day they had come to come in again and that was just awful. thinking back to it, it is so... it is so upsetting to think about how she was feeling on those last, those last few weeks of her life. how are you and how are the children? it's... you learn to cope, i would say. it is not about accepting that dianne has died. i can't do that. she is not with us any more.

you know, my kids... it has been a struggle. a real struggle at some points, but you know what? i always... we always seem to get through it as a family. it was her birthday in august and she didn't turn 52. ijust turned 52 and she didn't get 52. no, it's... she's really not here any more. i feel bereft because i can't have that friendship with anyone else. she was the only one. and i feel sad for everything that she will miss... seeing the kids grow up, everything that they will miss. because they had a great mum. i miss her desperately. desperately, yeah.

there is no one else like... like her. with dianne oxberry, there was no time at all, but with me, this was three and a half years ago. whereas i could have been dianne. rachel is terminally ill with ovarian cancer. did you know anything about ovarian cancer before? me? nope. not at all. ijust thought, i don't feel right. i need to go and sort it out. i was prepared for it.

my husband wasn't. the biggest shock was that we thought we were going to have the next 20 or 30 years together and there is a significant risk that is not going to be the case. and i want to spend time with my wife. since then, rachel has had a hysterectomy and four rounds of chemotherapy. she is currently on a cancer drug trial at manchester's christie hospital. the tumour is still growing, but not at the rate it would have been if i hadn't been on treatment. i will always have it and i know that, but my family all know that... my husband and my daughters. when she is going through her chemotherapy, that is tough. she can't get out of bed... and she is taking so much medication. you know, we have had this whole kitchen full

of painkillers and injections... we have had extra time and it was all down to the early diagnosis. there is no doubt about that at all. i have worked at christie hospital over the last 20 years, working with patients like dianne and rachel, working with ovarian cancer. it is a disease that is not very well understood. here are some figures. 7500 women a year are diagnosed. 4000 die. 11 women every day. survival rates are lower than many cancers. less than half of patients survive for five years. that is because the illness comes to light when it is already at an advanced stage, when it has already spread within the woman's abdomen. one in four women are diagnosed after arriving at a&e.

the two biggest risk factors are age and family history. most women develop the honours after the menopause. unfortunately, for ovarian cancer, survival rates have been very poor. other countries in europe are significantly better than us. my sisters and i had lost our mum to ovarian cancer in 2017. you and mum had a particularly... you were very alike, weren't you? gardening because she was a massive gardener... i do miss that actually because even now, i will go out in the garden and i will want to ask her about something. i think she was quite resigned to it, wasn't she, by this point?

oh yeah. definitely. my dad feels that there were chances to catch the cancer. what is frustrating is she knew there was something not right. she went to them. they didn't initially do what they should have perhaps done to spot it earlier. oh, no, definitely. she went there and said, i have got a swollen stomach again and they said, well, have you thought about going to be gym? this is a 79—year—old woman who has probably never been to the gym in her life. certainly, that initial diagnosis was late in coming, but i think she should have just been listened to more. the tv presenter, sarah greene, feels the same. she had a similar situation with her mother and actress, marjie lawrence. she was always determined to be an actress, but she went on working all her life.

three children, but always went on working. until marjie started to feel poorly. her gp... continually said, well, it could be this, it could be that. then her tummy started to get very bloated. she got thinner and thinner. she was getting more and more tired. i mean, just going crazy trying to work out what the problem could be. eventually, a heart surgeon suggested it could be cancer. sarah went back to her mum's gp. and i explained to him and he said, well, who says that? on what authority did he say that? so he came and had a look. he tapped her tummy and he called the ambulance. she went into a&e and they found a mass. three and a half weeks later, she died at home. a day after that,

i was in the waiting room of the community nurses... up on the notice board was a leaflet listing every symptom that my mother had and saying, this could be ovarian cancer. if we had seen that leaflet three months earlier, it could have been a very different story. sarah still feels the impact. grief doesn't go away. if you're lucky you learn how to live with it. when i learned about dianne it just brought it home. it is not silent and it need not kill, if you know what you are looking for. the symptoms are persistent bloating, feeling full, loss of appetite, pelvic or abdominal

pain, needing to wee more urgently and more often. symptoms are frequent, persistent and new. ovarian cancer symptoms can be vague and the diagnosis can be missed. screening programmes for this cancer have not been proven successful in contrast to the situation for bowel cancer. possible diagnosis can be confirmed by a combination of the specific blood test called ca 125. and an internal ultrasound. treatment options include chemotherapy and surgery, but the number of drugs we have available for ovarian cancer is less than we have for other cancers. we don't have a huge range of drugs that we can treat them with. this really has a huge impact on survival chances, and what we must do to really tackle ovarian cancer on all these fronts. sometimes we're back by mid afternoon and sometimes

late at night. the scan today is to see what happens. you had a ct before. any problem with the injection? bring your arms bring yourarms up... bring your arms up... breathe away. so that will be 1255. it is quite tiring. you just feel the dye going in and asking her to take a deep breath. and then you breathe again. how do you feel about a quick thank

you to get the results in two weeks. that must be a quite anxious time. yes, it is. it's the first thing you think about in the morning and the last thing you think about before going to sleep. the drug trial as part of the battle against this disease. the three key elements or early diagnosis, developing a screening programme and cutting edge treatments to prolong lives. it will be great to cure some patients. for those we cannot care and hopefully we can let them longer and better. in manchester they are trying a new procedure. they are taking tumours out of patients on the third floor, and testing them on the fifth. what we are doing here is looking at cells that we have grown from real human tumours. this particular project has been working for three to four years. it is quite a difficult cancer

to take samples from. patients have to have an operation to get samples so it is key to have laboratories that are close to the operating theatres. the aim is to use a needed therapy treatments to tackle this cancer. we can extract from the tumour at the time of surgery. we can infuse that back into the patient so they get their own selves back to attack that cancer. we now know what was called ovarian cancer actually starts from cells in the fallopian tubes. the idea is cells on the fallopian tube transform to become cancerous. and then they slough off and go on the surface of the ovary. the key to increasing survival rates

is to catch it quickly. this man's team is trying to get the first steps through screening programmes. the end result is that we are hoping to gain insight and that will allow us to focus on particular parts of cells to develop a screening test. how long could it take to make a breakthrough? i'm hoping that it will be within my scientific lifetime. hopefully within the next ten to 15 years. they had to try it but unfortunately it did not work. so we move onto the next one. rachel's trial was not controlling her cancer. this is her fifth round of chemotherapy. even when they said, rachel,

i'm sorry it's not working, i knew it was not working. you just know in yourself. yes, lam ready, lam ready for the next chemo. how long is a cycle? i have six months, and it is once a month. we start a new series at the start of every session. and it is who wins by the end of the chemo. you are extraordinarily positive. you have to be. you can't be negative, there is no point. lam in i am in the best place. and lam in the best place. and i couldn't ask for more. i'm quite lucky, really.

at hospital and at home they remain very positive. life goes on. itjust goes on. there's nothing you can do about it. what's important is what is going to happen next week. having some good times. i am delighted that i have a grandchild. i thought, to be honest, when i was diagnosed that i wouldn't get to see any grandchildren. and i love children. are you ready?! just a few days after we filmed with rachel she contracted a chest infection. because of her weakened immune system she was unable to fight it off.

sadly, she passed away last week at the age of 57. it was one of dianne's favourite places. in here somewhere are her roses? yes, it was bred in her memory. we ta ke yes, it was bred in her memory. we take the children and dogs here to say that it was done for mummy. it is heart wrenching at the same time also raw. and that is ian has been trying to do last year. create something positive from what had been. we find ourselves at the end of our

first year which is unbelievable. he set up a charity. it has already raised more than £100,000. some of the money has gone to professor ahmed's work in oxford. i think you'll be able to look back in a few years when the kids get in their teens. they can look back and say my mum, she died when they were young, but she made a difference to people. she would have been amused and mortified but i would have liked to say, can you believe this? 80 people running, with your name on the t—shirts! she would have gone, oh, my god! please! ian is on a mission to raise awareness about ovarian cancer. i don't sit here criticising doctors or what they did because they were amazing. it is about making this at the forefront of the thoughts of

doctors. we have a long-term legacy that we want to focus on what she stood for and her life. ovarian cancer is this much of her story. this is her story. that isjust how it ended. how does the future look now for you and the kids? it is still very very hard for me to think about. the years going ahead. i have to hope that my kids will have a full life and be very happy. despite what happened to them...

storm dennis continues to batter britain and we have had windy weather today with top gusts of 91 mph recorded in wales but it has been windy everywhere. we also have had heavy rain and that rain has started to cause flooding problems as well and they are in excess of 70 flood warnings in place and they continue to rise every hour somewhere flooding is likely. 0n continue to rise every hour somewhere flooding is likely. on top of that, we have more heavy rain to come with the met office amber

warning in force until sunday afternoon across north and south england and wales. this is storm dennis, the big problem is this weather front that stretches into the atlantic and long this weather front we will get pulses of heavy rain working in and the other issue is the winds are blowing parallel to the front and that means a front will not move very far very fast and that means overnight tonight the rain will get heavier across wales, south—west england and also the west midlands in these areas already have some rivers flooding so we are likely to see things turning nasty for the time you're overnight and into sunday morning with a significant risk of some disruption. it does stay mild overnight for england and wales, were rain in northern england but even as the rain eases at times we still have all of that water running down the catchments and further north it is a chillier start with blustery showers. sunday, the rain could be slower to clear through southern england and east anglia and the

winds get very strong through the english channel, gusts of maybe 70 mph and inland gusts of around 50 or perhaps 60 mph so blustery conditions and further showers blowing in across north and west and given the strength of the wind, it will feel cold here. heading through sunday evening, if anything the winds will get even stronger across northern areas of the uk but particularly in scotland were across northern areas we could get gusts of 70 or even 80 mph so there is the risk of transport disruption for scotla nd risk of transport disruption for scotland as we edge into monday morning. 0ne scotland as we edge into monday morning. one day will be a day of sunny spells and blustery showers and the winds will take a long time to calm down and temperatures on the face of it falling a few degrees but feeling cold given the strength of the wind across northern areas.

this is bbc world news today. i'm lucy grey, our top stories: the first coronavirus death in europe, a chinese tourist in his 80s, dies after being diagnosed in france. troops are deployed in the north of england, as storm dennis hits the uk and northern europe. canada leads renewed calls for iran to hand over the black boxes from the ukrainian airliner brought down over tehran in january. the only remaining alternative now is to send it to a third country which would be in this case france which would be in this case france which has offered to assist because i think france understands the international committee has a lot of questions. and us astronomists are to ramp up their search for extra—terrestrial life.