WHEN Jack Render was told he had just six months to live he was numb with shock.

Then came the insatiable thirst for information, then the anger, then the long, agonising fight back.

The battle with cancer was one he never gave up even as he lay dying in Worcester Royal Infirmary, Ronkswood, 19 years after doctors gave him six more months on earth.

Jack, adored by many for his determination and charisma, was still telling jokes to the people at his bedside shortly before he died, aged 54, of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma on October 2, 1991.

The hospital room was crammed with 23 people, a small sample of the many lives he had touched before his own was cut short so prematurely.

Many of the people gathered around his bed were friends and members of the Worcester Cancer Support Group, which has provided help, advice and friendship to hundreds of cancer sufferers and their families.

The group, the living legacy of Jack's fighting spirit, is still going and celebrates its 25th anniversary this year.

Jack founded the group with Jessie Christie, then a part-time nursing sister, who was diagnosed with cancer shortly after Jack.

Both were shocked at the lack of support for people like them and decided to do something about it.

Jessie is still alive and now lives in Arbroath, Scotland, after beating off lung and bowel cancer.

Shortly before he died Jack was made an MBE for his work and visited Buckingham Palace, where he met the Queen.

Jack's widow Sylvia, aged 68, of Calgary Drive, Lower Wick, Worcester, who has also been actively involved in the group, said: "There was no such thing as Macmillan nurses then. We were on our own. We just looked at each other and said what do we do?' It was a case of just get on with it.

"If I said my husband had cancer people wouldn't talk to me again. They wouldn't know what to say."

When Jack was diagnosed in 1973 the couple had two young children, aged five and three, and Sylvia had to explain to them that their dad was sometimes too ill to play with them. She said: "He was frantic. He wanted to have every bit of information he could get. We spent hours in reference libraries, looking up words we had seen in the medical report.

"But he had a fighting spirit. Initially his reaction was shock. You're just numb. Then comes the wanting to know about it. Then comes the anger. Jack was so very, very angry. In the last week of his life he was angry because he knew he was dying. He couldn't even play his piano. There was a lot to be angry about.

"But if someone came to him with cancer, suddenly there was this charismatic man. He said expect good things'. He was always positive."

The group which Jack helped to found has proved a lifeline, not only to those diagnosed with cancer, but their families, friends and carers.

The group holds monthly meetings, offers 24-hour telephone support, supplies free library books about cancer and provides volunteers who offer an information service in the oncology clinic of Worcestershire Royal Hospital.

More importantly, it is still going, chaired by 78-year-old Hannah Thake of Mortlake Avenue, Red Hill, Worcester, who took over when Jack died and was groomed by him as his successor.

Hannah, diagnosed with breast cancer in the 1980s, which she has since beaten, originally went along to one of the meetings with the belief, as a pharmacist, that she could put more into the group than she could get out of it for herself.

She said: "I ended up getting much more out of it than I put in into it. The support I received was wonderful. I was numb really until I found other people. I was a person who buried my feelings but it was inspiring, hearing other people's stories. The support group provided me with the strength I would not have had on my own."

She was nominated for Worcestershire Woman of the Year in 1998 as woman of compassion'.

The group, which began with two people, now has more than 50 registered members and has sparked several satellite' support groups in Malvern, Droitwich, Kidderminster and Dudley, of which only the Droitwich and Dudley groups now survive.

Members of the Worcester-based group first met at each other's houses before moving to the Commandery.

The group now meets at 7.30pm on the first Thursday of every month at the Timberdine Resource Centre, Timberdine Close, Worcester.

However, due to flooding, the group is now temporarily based at Regent Residential Home in School Road, St John's, Worcester.

For more information on the group call Sylvia on 01905 422654 or Hannah on 01905 355642.