A lifelong Liverpool fan was told his cancer had returned when he couldn’t swallow for two days. Dickie Turney was diagnosed with cancer of the oesophagus in March last year but when doctors removed 80% of the vital organ he was told he had beaten the disease.
But years later he watched Liverpool beat Chelsea 2-1 at Anfield and instead of heading to the pub with his friends, including one of his best friends Jamie Horton, he disappeared home. The following day, Jamie received a text from his friend which said he was unable to swallow and had taken himself into hospital.
What doctors told him next was something he never expected, Jamie told the ECHO. He was told the cancer had returned aggressively and spread to his bones and several organs, leaving him with a terminal diagnosis. Jamie said: “He discharged himself from hospital because he wanted to go see his mum in Hendon but I could tell he was quickly deteriorating as he realised the scale of the issue.
“I went on the train with him to see his mum and he wasn’t well at all. When I picked him up after he got back at Lime Street his skin had turned yellow. He went to Clatterbridge when he got back and they said there was nothing they could really do. He went straight back down with his mum.”
But the 52-year-old, from Anfield, who was a massive fan of Michael Head and The Red Elastic Band, had set himself one goal and it was to see his musical hero play one last time before his death, having bought tickets to watch them at the Liverpool Philharmonic Hall on December 13. But the day before, after organising tickets for the gig with Jamie and his wife, he was told he was too ill to travel back to Liverpool.
Jamie, a taxi driver, said: “Mick [Head] was his hero, he followed him everywhere and he would go to the most extreme places in the country to see him play, just like with Liverpool, he would travel home and away to watch them too. Here was the homecoming gig on December 13th, the day he died and he text me saying he was worried he wouldn’t be able to make it. We organised the tickets because he said he needed me to take him in his wheelchair, but he text me to say the hospital said he was too ill to travel.”
Discussing the day of Dickie’s death and holding back his tears, Jamie said: “I had worked the night before and I got out the shower around 11am to a text saying ‘I’m not feeling good, wish you were here’. I asked if I should come down to see him but he said ‘not yet’. Then I got a phone call at around two o’clock from his mum saying he had died at 11.45am and the messages to me must have been one of the last things he did. He was just a lovely guy, no one had a bad thing to say about him.”
Jamie said: “As a person he was just a very thoughtful and giving guy. He had a lot of time for everyone. Everyone he could help out he could, he was just very calm and very kind.”
Following Dickie’s death earlier this month, Jamie, who followed Liverpool home and away alongside Dickie, has now organised a banner to be displayed in the Kop during Liverpool’s match with Leicester City at 8pm on Boxing Day. The banner will show a lyric from Newby Street by Michael Head and The Red Elastic Band, it will say: “I don’t know what it is about you…”.
