A FORMER industrialist from the North-East will don women’s clothing and take part in one of the strangest 10k races in the country next weekend.

At the age of 78, Stafford Scholes, from Esh Winning, near Durham City, will take part in the Great Drag Race in London’s East End.

The event, on Sunday in Victoria Fields, Hackney, aims to raise public awareness of the threat of prostate cancer.

Along with nine other men dressed as women who will start the race, Mr Scholes has the disease. In his case, the condition is now terminal.

An activist who has been campaigning tirelessly on behalf of prostate cancer charities since his diagnosis seven years ago, Mr Scholes has been filmed in recent weeks for a documentary which is expected to shown on television later this year.

“You can pick me out on the group photograph,” said Mr Scholes.

“I am the one in the rather fetching green ensemble,” he added.

While the Great Drag Race will be started by ten volunteers, the organisers are hoping that at least a thousand men will accept the challenge and complete the 10k race dressed as women.

It follows the success of mass runs by women around the UK to raise awareness of female cancers.

The ten volunteers range in age from 39 to 78, highlighting the fact that prostate cancer, which kills 10,200 men in the UK every year, can affect relatively young men.

Vicky Munro, spokeswoman for the X Foundation, organisers of The Great Drag Race, said: “Stafford has been great, although he is not the most enthusiastic when it comes to dressing up as a woman.”

She said the former industrialist, who set up Joblings glass research centre at Brancepeth Castle, near Durham City, is “totally embarassed” by dressing up in drag.

“But he is doing it anyway because he thinks it is important to raise awareness,” she said.

Mr Scholes will try to walk as much as he can, but expects to finish in a wheelchair pushed by his daughter, Debbi.

Symptoms of an enlarged prostate, which could be a sign of prostate cancer include having to rush to the toilet to pass urine, difficulty or pain in passing urine, passing urine more often than usual, especially at night or blood in the urine or semen.