Movers and Shakers: John Caulcutt

The subject of the second of our short series of Parky Profiles is John Caulcutt, a man with so many strings to his bow it is hard to know where to start. He has been a musician and music producer, sold t-shirts on Petticoat Lane, became a stockbroker and the youngest partner on the London Stock Exchange at 20, and is a major philanthropist and fundraiser, among his proudest achievements being designing Comic Relief’s red nose.

He managed to get Tom Jones, Eric Clapton and Cat Stevens to perform in a concert at the O2, raising £1.8 million for cancer charities and in recent years has tapped up his music business contacts for shows supporting Parkinson’s research.

John’s own diagnosis with Parkinson’s barely seems to have slowed him down. He treats the condition as an irritating opponent to be conquered, his main weapon being exercise:

“I swim a mile every day…I work out in the gym every day, and every time I push those weights up to get out of breath, I go “F*** Parkinson's.”” He is a big supporter of Cure Parkinson’s and such is his optimism, that he believes something will come along within three years to “stop Parkinson’s in its tracks.”

I am sorry that this update is shorter than usual but we Movers and Shakers have been preoccupied with the extraordinary progress made by our Parliamentary petition calling for the measures in our Parky Charter to be implemented. Last Tuesday, with signatures just topping 56,000 as we strove towards the target of 100,000 which should trigger a Commons debate, I wrote a piece here asking what we needed to do to make Parkinson’s go viral.

Well, early on Sunday we blasted past the 80,000 milestone, something we weren’t expecting for another month. On Monday I will be asking just how that happened.

But in the meantime keep signing and sharing. You can find the petition here.