Jo Baines and David Threlfall
13 Oct 2010 - Shameless actor David Threlfall has provided the voiceover for one of the most dramatic episodes in an exhibition on the history of Manchester's world famous cancer centre The Christie. Manchester-born Threlfall - a distinguished film, stage and television actor now best known for his portrayal of infamously feckless father Frank Gallagher in Shameless - has been a long-time supporter of The Christie. Now he has recorded W. J. Meredith's account of his team's wartime radon production in the Blue John Mine at Castleton, Derbyshire, for the first ever exhibition documenting the history of the cancer hospital. Concerned that cities targeted by enemy bombers might suffer radioactive contamination, the government decreed in 1939 that all radium should be moved out of major urban areas. "Mine Kampf or What I did in the War” is Chief Physicist Meredith's account of the challenges he and other Christie workers faced when transporting the radium and rigging up a radon extraction plant in a cave 100ft below the tunnel entrance. Problems included an initial lack of electricity, unreliable generators, hard frosts and deep snow, but The Christie was the only cancer hospital in Britain to continue cancer treatment throughout the war, missing overall just 14 days.
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