A former soldier who bravely took on penny-pinching NHS bosses in his fight against terminal cancer has died, aged 37. Mark Bannister's wife has revealed how her husband was forced to LIE to doctors in order to get the life-prolonging treatment he had been denied due to a cruel postcode lottery. But after wasting six months of precious time trying to obtain the drug Avastin, Mark's cancer was too advanced for the medicine to have any effect. The dad-of-two succumbed to the brain tumour he had been battling for nine years at around 6am on Monday morning, with his wife Karen, 33, at his side. In tribute to her husband, who served in Northern Ireland and Bosnia during nine years in the army, grieving Karen said: "The Avastin didn't have any effect but we had to fight for six months in order to get it. "In all that time his tumour had been growing. In the end, he had to claim that he was living at another address in order to get the treatment. Who knows what would have happened if he had got the drug sooner - I truly believe it would have helped him.
Meet the real-life Little Bo Peep - a young woman who spends her days tending to her four pet SHEEP .
A young orangutan comes over all shy as she hides her face behind a broken bucket .
A GIRL nicknamed JAWS by bullies who taunted her because of her underbite is em-bracing her new post-surgery life .
HOTSPOT MEDIA - MILEY MASH-UP: MILEY CYRUS’ naked wrecking ball vid has been lampooned in this side-spitting photo-mashup .
A photographer from the United Arab Emirates travelled to Pakistan where he captured the lives of local people in a series of expressive portraits .
A British diver has set a new world record for the longest warm water scuba dive by spending a mammoth 49 hours and 56 minutes under water .
A former cosmetic rep who swapped make-up for a career as a Marilyn Monroe lookalike has pocketed a staggering $4million (£2,630,000) as a full-time doppelgänger .
Magical photos of your baby smiling for the first time are a priceless treasure for many a proud parent .
A mother-of-three who weighed almost 16st has revealed how she lost 7 .
FEAST your eyes on the £500K coin-covered Range Rover that could be the world’s most blinged-out car .
Primed and ready for action, this collection of striking images from the battlefield could be mistaken for authentic photos taking during World War II .