Lorraine Mercer MBE is a British thalidomide survivor, painter, lace maker, and carriage driver with the RDA.
Mercer was a representative of the global thalidomide community as a bearer of the Olympic Torch in 2012 for her country. [1] [2] Her chariot was adapted to carry the Olympic torch safely above her head away from the oxygen she needs.
In 2015, Mercer received an MBE for community services with the lonely at the local hospital in Mid Sussex. [2] [3]
Thalidomide, sold under the brand names Contergan and Thalomid among others, is an oral medication used to treat a number of cancers, graft-versus-host disease, and many skin disorders. While thalidomide has been used in a number of HIV-associated conditions, such use is associated with increased levels of the virus.
Zara Anne Elizabeth Tindall is a British equestrian, an Olympian, and a member of the British royal family. She is the daughter of Anne, Princess Royal, and Captain Mark Phillips. She is a granddaughter of Queen Elizabeth II, a niece of King Charles III and 21st in the line of succession to the British throne.
Sir Steven Geoffrey Redgrave is a British retired rower who won gold medals at five consecutive Olympic Games from 1984 to 2000. He has also won three Commonwealth Games gold medals and nine World Rowing Championships golds. He is the most successful male rower in Olympic history, and the only man to have won gold medals at five Olympic Games in an endurance sport.
Dawn Fraser is an Australian freestyle champion swimmer and former politician. She is one of only four swimmers to have won the same Olympic individual event three times – in her case the women's 100-metre freestyle.
Ronald William Clarke, AO, MBE was an Australian athlete, writer, and the Mayor of the Gold Coast from 2004 to 2012. He was one of the best-known middle- and long-distance runners in the 1960s, notable for setting seventeen world records.
Sally Jane Janet Gunnell is a British former track and field athlete, active between 1984 and 1997, who won the 1992 Olympic gold medal in the 400 metres hurdles. During a golden 24-month period between 1992 and 1994, Gunnell won every international event open to her, claiming Olympic Games, World Championship, European Championship, Commonwealth Games, Goodwill Games, IAAF World Cup and European Cup golds in the event, and breaking the British, European and World records in it. She is the only female British athlete to have won all four 'majors'; Olympic, World, European and Commonwealth titles, and was the first female 400 metres hurdler in history to win the Olympic and World titles and break the world record. Her former world record time of 52.74 secs in 1993, still ranks in the world all-time top ten and is the current British record. She was named World and European Female Athlete of the Year in 1993, and was made an MBE in 1993 and an OBE in 1998.
Lorraine Kelly is a Scottish television presenter, theatrical artist and journalist. She has presented various television shows for ITV, including Good Morning Britain (1988–1992), GMTV (1993–2010), This Morning, Daybreak (2012–2014), The Sun Military Awards (2016–present), STV Children's Appeal (2016–present), and her eponymous programme Lorraine (2010–present).
Lorraine Toussaint is a Trinidadian-American actress. She is the recipient of various accolades, including a Black Reel Award, a Critics' Choice Television Award and a Screen Actors Guild Award.
Raelene Ann Boyle is an Australian retired athlete, who represented Australia at three Olympic Games as a sprinter, winning three silver medals, and was named one of 100 National Living Treasures by the National Trust of Australia in 1998. Boyle was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1996 and subsequently became a board member of Breast Cancer Network Australia (BCNA). In 2017, she was named a Legend in the Sport Australia Hall of Fame.
Highfields School is a coeducational secondary school and sixth form located in Matlock, Derbyshire, England. At the time of its September 2012 Ofsted inspection, the school had 1175 pupils on roll aged 11–18, with 215 in the sixth form. It is split across two sites in the town 1.8 miles apart.
Katherine Fiona “Kate” Allenby MBE is a British modern pentathlete who competed in two Summer Olympics, taking the bronze medal at the 2000 Games and placing in 8th place in 2004. She has won medals at four World Championships, and after retiring from sport, she became a physical education teacher in Bath, England.
(Francis) Benedict Hunt-DavisMBE is a former British competition rower and an Olympic champion. He was appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire in the 2001 New Year Honours list.
In the late 1950s and early 1960s, the use of thalidomide in 46 countries by women who were pregnant or who subsequently became pregnant resulted in the "biggest man-made medical disaster ever," with more than 10,000 children born with a range of severe deformities, such as phocomelia, as well as thousands of miscarriages.
April Jeanette Mendez is an American author, screenwriter and retired professional wrestler. She is best known for her time in WWE under the ring name AJ Lee. She is currently an executive producer and color commentator for WOW – Women of Wrestling.
Lorraine Newman is a British scriptwriter, television producer, and the executive producer of the BBC soap opera EastEnders from 2012 to 2013. Newman, who has worked on EastEnders for "nearly 20 years", received the role of executive producer when her predecessor stepped down in 2012. Newman was also the executive producer of Babs, a BBC biopic about Dame Barbara Windsor.
John Ayton MBE, is a British businessman and investor in the luxury goods industry, and the co-founder of Links of London and Annoushka, an English jewellery brand founded in 2009.
Michaelina "Mikey" Argy MBE is an English thalidomide survivor and activist. She is a past chair of the National Advisory Committee of the Thalidomide Trust, the organisation through which British thalidomide survivors receive financial support, and is still involved in the media activities of the trust.
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