star Tony Audenshaw has vowed to fulfil his wife’s dying wish in a poignant admission.
The Bob Hope star, who launched his soap career in 1996, lost his wife Ruth Audenshaw in April 2017, when she was just 43 years old. Now her dying wish has been revealed, and Tony plans to keep his promise.
The star is running the in 2025 to help raise money for a new diagnostic test for – the same cancer that killed Ruth – which could help to save thousands of lives.
He last ran the marathon in 2015 in support of Leukaemia and Lymphoma Research, but this time he will be supporting Pancreatic Cancer UK.
He told PA: “She left all her friends and family a card to read after she died, and in it she said ‘if you run London again will you do it for pancreatic cancer?’ She also then added something like, ‘No pressure, if you don’t fancy it don’t’, which is very Ruth.”
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Emmerdale star Tony Audenshaw will fulfil his wife’s dying wish (Image: Getty)
Tony, 60, has completed the event 15 times before, with a personal best of two hours, 58 minutes and 49 seconds in 2006.
He confessed that when Ruth was diagnosed, he didn’t want to risk signing up for the race instead of spending time with her, admitting: “I could have got a place the next year but we didn’t know how she was going to be. It just didn’t feel right.
He last ran the marathon in 2015 (Image: Getty)
“I didn’t want to spend all that time training because it is a big commitment when you’re training and being out of the house all the time. And then I just never really felt like it again.”
Speaking about his wife on Loose Women, Tony said: “I really miss Ruth — grief is not linear. It goes up and down. I grieve, go to work, keep busy. Let’s have more miserable storylines to cheer me up at work!”