Diners at Pizza Express’s Osborne Road restaurant raised money and awareness for Macmillan Cancer Support while munching on the chain’s famous dough balls.

The national restaurant group is now in the second of four years working in partnership with Macmillan Cancer Support, aiming to raise £2 million by 2020.

Laura Ramsey, restaurant manager, told JesmondLocal that Osborne Road’s Pizza Express is only expected to make 0.25-0.5% of the national donations for the event, which is presumed to raise £40,000.

“The participation from the public usually depends,” said Ramsey. “We’ve got a lot of students around here, so we do tend to find that quite a lot of students will come in because of the fact that the Snowball Dough Balls are only £1.

“Other sites, like our Durham site, will be making hundreds today because they’re much more central to the city. They’ll make a lot more than we will.”

Pizza Express has started requesting a 25p donation to charity whenever its ‘Padana’ pizza is ordered, an effort which has already raised £1.2 million.

Costs of funding the basic amenities of Macmillan Cancer Support resources

The north east remains the region with the highest incidences of cancer, according to the Office for National Statistics. Cancer Research UK say that illnesses in Newcastle and Gateshead are particularly prevalent, with 2,800 reported cases of cancer each year.

In 2017/2018, Cancer Research UK spent more than £5 million on research into cancer within Newcastle and Gateshead. This allowed two targets to be met: 86.7% of patients receive treatment within 62 days of their diagnosis/referral; and 98.7% of cancer patients receive radiotherapy treatment within 31 days of their diagnosis – both of which are above the national average.