No Time for SelfPity

[Guest guest]

I refuse to hide my face away

By Elizabeth Grice

 

(Filed: 07/08/2006)

 

 

Mouth cancer may have changed the way property tycoon

Elliott Bernerd looks but it won't diminish him, he

tells Elizabeth Grice

 

Up-front is a term that could have been invented for

Elliott Bernerd, the property tycoon who refused to

hide away after his face was mutilated by mouth

cancer.

 

Elliott Bernerd promoting Saving Faces, with Prof Iain

Hutchison and Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt

 

Two colossal operations left him with much of his chin

missing and his speech impaired but he returned to a

life of active wheeling and dealing as if it were

something his doctors had prescribed.

 

Wearing the white surgical mask that has become his

trademark, he addressed a public gathering at the

Royal Society in London last month. " I hope you can

hear me, " he rasped. " It's not my choice I'm this

way. "

 

Courage is the word that comes to mind, but it doesn't

begin to do justice to the combative streak that has

played a big part in his resumption of public life and

entrepreneurial chutzpah - probably even to his

survival. " It depends on willpower, " he says, " on the

sheer determination not to be pushed to one side in

society - and why should I be? "

 

His greeting to me is as much a challenge as an

introduction: " I'm Elliott Bernerd. I've a sore mouth

from my operation. If you don't understand me, there's

nothing I can do. " It takes concentration at first

because his tongue and lip movements are so restricted

but Bernerd is a man used to making himself

understood.

 

He has just given £1 million to Saving Faces, a

charity run by Prof Iain Hutchison, one of Britain's

leading oral and maxillofacial surgeons, to fund a

facial surgery research programme. This has been

matched by £1 million from Cancer Research UK for a

clinical trial.

 

Though Hutchison didn't operate on Bernerd, he became

his medical mentor throughout the ordeal and the two

are now firm friends.

 

" Elliott is the supreme example of an indomitable

human being overcoming adversity. He has never

exhibited any weakness at all; never shown any hint of

self-pity. He has a phenomenal drive and power, " says

Hutchison.

 

Though mouth cancer is as common in Britain as

leukaemia and melanoma, and twice as common as

cervical cancer, much less is heard about it because

the inevitably disfiguring surgery, affecting the most

public part of the body, makes many patients

reclusive.

 

" There are two ways of dealing with something like

this: you sit in a corner feeling sorry for yourself,

or you get on with it. I just get on with it. You

can't wrap yourself in cotton wool. Of course, I'd

rather not be in the position I'm in. But that feeling

lasts for about one moment in 10. In the other nine, I

say: I am a very fortunate person to be here. Feeling

sorry for myself doesn't help. " He blames his cancer

on cigars, stress and overwork.

 

Bernerd, 60, a Londoner who left school at 15 with no

qualifications, has been a giant of the UK property

industry for 30 years. Chairman of the group

Chelsfield Partners, he features 217th in the current

Sunday Times Rich List, at an estimated worth of £277

million.

 

He made his name developing Britain's first

American-style business park, Stockley Park, near

Heathrow, and had huge interests in Paddington Basin

and White City. He owned Wentworth Golf Club, was

chairman of the South Bank arts complex and the Royal

Philharmonic Orchestra.

 

" He was very much the debonair man-about-town, " says a

financial commentator. " He had a certain good-looking

schmaltz and women found him irresistible. "

 

It was towards the end of 2000 that he discovered

" something very simple in my mouth. It felt like an

ulcer but it wouldn't go away. When it was diagnosed

as cancer, my reaction was very simple: fear, surprise

and then, because I am a fighter, the determination to

fight. "

 

" It is the most mutilating and socially isolating

cancer, " says Bernerd, whose own psychological

robustness has been a revelation to friends and

continues to be a scourge to business rivals.

" Patients who have cancer in the head and neck tend to

stay at home, they lose touch with their friends, they

become hermits, they're frightened to do anything,

they retreat into themselves.

 

 

'I'm a fighter': Bernerd before

his illness

 

He approached Hutchison - whom he'd met socially

before - for a fourth opinion. Who was the world's top

oral and maxillofacial surgeon, he wanted to know.

Hutchison recommended Jatin Shah at the

Sloan-Kettering Hospital in New York.

 

'I wanted the operation done there and then, " Bernerd

says, snapping his fingers. " I wanted the cancer out.

I didn't want to mess around. " He moved his office,

his secretary and his family to New York and continued

to work from hospital. The first operation lasted 14

hours. A year later, the cancer returned and he

underwent more extreme surgery, lasting 22½ hours.

 

" I handled my problem my way, with a very radical

solution, " he says. His ex-wife, his estranged wife

and his two grown-up daughters supported him

throughout.

 

In the entrepreneurial sense, Bernerd was given up for

dead but astonished his rivals by embarking on an

18-month fight in 2004 to take his company private.

" Some of them expected me to lose my edge, " he says, a

smile behind the mask. " Some hoped. Some of them have

had a shock. I won the fight. "

 

" In a short time, you forgot about any disabilities he

had,'' says one business associate. " What he did would

have been monumental even for a man who was 100 per

cent fit and 30 years old. "

 

Then, just weeks after selling Chelsfield in a £2.1

billion deal, Bernerd was busy assembling a team of

financial backers for what has become Chelsfield

Partners.

 

There may be an element of bravado in Bernerd's

refusal to let the disease conquer him but the people

around him are in awe of what he has achieved, the

scale of his physical rehabilitation and his apparent

indifference to people's reaction to his damaged face.

 

 

Always suave and impeccably turned out, Bernerd was a

man for whom appearances mattered. They still do, but

now he is grateful simply to be alive. " The only thing

you are interested in is the next day. Whether the sun

is shining or it is raining, it's wonderful. How you

look becomes less of a priority.

 

" The mask is my invention. I don't have to wear it at

all. What's under it is not all that frightening, I

can assure you. But I've got into the habit. "

 

Most mouth cancer patients are fed with food

supplements through a " peg " in the stomach and, after

his second operation, Bernerd was told he would never

have food by mouth again. (He refuses to go into

detail about the surgery, but his jawbone was

reconstructed with bone from his leg, leaving him with

very limited tongue movement.)

 

He took the news with characteristic defiance. " I

enjoy flavour and taste, so I taught myself to eat by

mouth. I can have everything I want now - pasta,

potatoes, fruit, sausages and fried eggs - but I have

to have it puréed. Certain of my taste buds are more

acute than they were before. I can work out what's in

the food, even the herbs. "

 

His chef prepares it specially for him. And when he

goes to London's River Café, a place where he feels

comfortable because his special requirements are

understood, the co-proprietor-chef, Ruth Rogers, looks

after him in the same way.

 

Though he has trouble with certain consonants and

projecting his voice seems an effort, Bernerd's

ability to communicate is astonishing for a man with

so little movement in his tongue and lips.

 

" I have my moments, " he says. " When I'm overtired,

it's harder to talk. It depends on how happy or

unhappy I am. " He has become so expert in managing his

condition and its side-effects - coughing in the

night, a dry mouth - that Hutchison sends other

patients to him for advice.

 

Bernerd has refused requests to speak about his

illness because he doesn't want to be the subject of

voyeuristic journalism, and he declined to be

photographed for this article. Even now, he is

reserving aspects of his singular medical history to

be written up in a medical journal.

 

" It's not about me, " he says repeatedly. It's about a

cause that he and Hutchison are passionate about - the

need for a scientific exchange of data between

Britain's leading surgeons so that new and better ways

can be found to treat mouth cancer. A team of

independent researchers will work with surgeons to

recruit patients into clinical studies.

 

" Saving Faces is the only charity dedicated to this, "

says Bernerd. " The survival rate for mouth and neck

cancer is 60 per cent. I would like it to be 80 or

even 90 per cent. We have a huge resource that is

being lost to the world - every day, every week -

because records of what surgeons do in their

individual operations are not being kept. Once we have

the data, we can make fast inroads into what will and

will not help. "

 

Hutchison believes a centralised system of analysis is

essential. He envisages a data bank and a tumour bank.

" The tumour that is removed is gold dust. It could be

used for genetic studies or to trial new drugs.

Surgeons often forget to collect samples. "

 

Saving Faces runs programmes in schools to illustrate

- gruesomely, in the case of mouth cancer - the

dangers of smoking. It's an initiative Bernerd

supports fiercely. " I can't bear the smell of smoke

now and I won't have anyone near me who smokes. I find

it repugnant for what it represents, not for me, but

for society. "

For more information, call 020 7601 7582, visit

www.savingfaces.co.uk or email savingfaces.

 

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