A HELENSBURGH woman has presented a cheque to two cancer charities after organising a 'Maitinee at the Musicals' event.

Donna Hicks, 44, raised £4,065 for the Beatson Cancer Charity and Myeloma UK at the events in The Tower Digital Arts Centre.

She told the Advertiser: "I'm absolutely delighted with how it went. It was a real team effort and helping to make it a success.

"It's about getting everyone involved and everyone was just as enthusiastic as me.

I think the main reason is because everyone has their own story about cancer and everyone can relate to it on a personal level, so wanted to get involved which is great."

Donna has raised many fundraisers since being diagnosed with myeloma, a type of cancer that develops from cells in the bone marrow called plasma cells, in September 2014.

But her most recent fundraiser has been one of her most successful with 300 tickets selling out in a few days.

She said: "I made a post on Facebook post and within a week everyone had it and they sold out. I had to phone The Tower before they started publicising the event because there was no tickets left."

Donna thanked everyone who helped at the event and said she is "really grateful". She specifically thanked Claire Lang, who works at The Tower, Pamela Frew, the principal teacher of music at Hermitage Academy and music teacher Colette McEwan and Andrew Turnbull, a multimedia producer at STV, for their commitment and time.

"The Tower gave us the venue for free so we didn't have that expense. If we had had to pay out for the pianists costs that would have been another huge expense but they done it for free which was really good," she added.

The event featured a variety of performers, 20 adults and around 15 children, who were happy to help out.

Donna previously told the Advertiser: “The concert saw everyone go through a variety of emotions because almost everyone knows someone affected by cancer.

“The performers came together to sing You’ll Never Walk Alone from Carousel in memory of people they had lost to cancer.

“Behind the performers on the screen as they sang were pictures of their loved ones.

“The feedback from the event has been amazing, if emotional.”

Donna's cancer means that she experiences fatigue on a daily basis, but it's not her own experiences of cancer that inspire her to raise money and awareness.

She lost her mum to cancer in 2014 and was determined to keep her memory alive for her grandchildren Conor, Ollie and Emily.

She said: "The main day to day difficulty I experience is fatigue but I’ve realised that whether I sit around doing nothing, or whether I’m active and keep busy, I feel the same - so I’d rather be busy, living life to the full.".

Following the success of the first event, Donna is already organising another event for February, 24 2019.