Steve Cassidy performs fundraising concert at Laura McKenning's birthday party (From York Press)

Steve Cassidy performs fundraising concert at Laura McKenning's birthday party

4:36pm Thursday 18th March 2010 in

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A ROCK star who started his career at the age of 14 when he opened a Cliff Richard concert has joined forces with a 91-year-old former model to raise cash for charity.

When Steve Cassidy performed at the birthday party of York resident Laura McKenning, he donated his fee to a charity supporting patients with the muscle-weakening condition, Myasthenia Gravis.

Meanwhile, Mrs McKenning, who has suffered from the disease for 20 years, did not want any presents, so she asked guests to donate money to the Myasthenia Gravis Association instead.

Together they raised £151, which the charity will use to buy a £6,000 CoughAssist machine for York Hospital to help prevent respiratory complications in patients with neuromuscular diseases.

Mrs McKenning said: “When you get to 91 there isn't really anything you want and I would much rather the money went to help people with Myasthenia Gravis because it's such a dreadful illness.

“It affects all my muscles now. I can't brush my hair without my arm flopping down and sometimes I can't even swallow.

“But I don't let it get me down, I never have. I just deal with it and do the things I can do.”

Steve Cassidy, who wrote the song that welcomed Pope John Paul II to York in 1982, performed for Mrs McKenning at Barstow House, in St Benedict House, where she lives.

She said: “He was fantastic. He is so jolly and he played all the tunes that we all know. It was really fun.”

Mrs McKenning, whose husband, Jack, died six years ago, has one daughter, Anne, but was a foster mum to many more children.

From 1961 to 1971, she and her husband ran a home for 12 children in Danebury Drive, York, and also ran a home in Scarborough for 24 boys in the early 1970s.

In the 1950s she appeared as a model on the BBC programme Leisure And Pleasure and was also a bespoke tailoress.